Brazil lures foreign startups with acceleration programmes and incentives

In order to lure startups and foreign investment, the Brazilian government is promoting visas and other incentives for foreign businesses to relocate to the country. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has announced a US$78-million investment in an attempt to spur growth of up to 100 domestic and foreign technology entrepreneurs.

This is taking form in programmes such as Startup Brasil which is attempting to “aggregate groups of actors and institutions” in order to accelerate the startup’s process by involving the support of venture capitalists, researchers and mentors among other major incentives.

After being selected, startups can go through a government-funded acceleration process. These startups will have the potential of being selected for a further investment of resources including legal advice, financial investment and having access to funds of up to R$200 000. This public-private arrangement will help improve Brazil’s information technology sector as well as help foreigners to gain long-term visas in order to establish concrete assets in the country. The idea is to not only create an environment where expertise is being outsourced, but also where ventures can set up shop in order to provide more jobs and long-term assets to Brazil and its citizens.

As mentioned by Forbes, the Brazilian government announced last year that they were planning on spending around US$250 000 on information and technology startups. This, according to Minister of Science Technology and Innovation, Marco Antonio Raupp, is to make Brazilian software more competitive internationally and “to grow at a very high rate in order to attract foreign resources to the country, generate income for businesses and create skilled job positions for Brazilians.” Through initiatives like these, the government hopes to have trained up to 900 000 professional software engineers by the year 2022.

Another similar government initiative is that of Chile’s, suitably called Start-up Chile. What sets it apart from Brazil’s programme is that unlike Chile, Brazil encourages startups to permanently relocate. Although Brazil being a renowned innovator, government-funded programmes like this one has become one of the key drivers to compete with IT giants such as India, Russia and China.