After a three-minute Sales Pitch and the deliberation of the jury, the Guatemalan Andrea Benavente, Co-Founder of the company Natural Art, became the winner of the INCAE Entrepreneur Award 2018, taking with her $7,000 to grow her company. Second place with $5,000 went to Jaime Cerdas of Mundorep and third place with $3,000 went to José Ignacio Barrientos of Bambú Pallets.
Natural Art is a Guatemalan company dedicated to the manufacture of interior design items such as cushions, rugs and others. The idea behind this venture is to help reduce migration and take advantage of all the artisan knowledge of the people of Guatemala so that they can market their products in the United States of America and have sources of income that allow them not to seek to migrate north.
Andrea Benavente, founder of the winning venture was surprised and grateful for the opportunity to win the second edition of the INCAE Entrepreneur Award. With the prize money she will be able to strengthen her door to door sales and the possibility of fulfilling projects such as the one she has of selling to platforms such as Amazon.com. Javier Cerdas (from Mundorep) and Ignacio Barrientos (from Bambú Pallets), winners of second and third place respectively, commented on the importance of this type of initiatives to support entrepreneurship and the recognition it means for their companies to be chosen among the three winners and their work.
"It's a sign that what we are doing is right," Barrientos commented. The final event was held on November 15 at the Escalante Theater at 6:30 p.m. Ten finalists from six countries presented their Sales Pitch: Bambú Pallet (Costa Rica), Bi-DSS Technology (Honduras), Camas Karen (Nicaragua), Devel Systems (Guatemala), Gaia Artisan Coffee (Costa Rica), La Creativería (Costa Rica), Mundorep (Costa Rica), Natural Art (Guatemala), Protege-T Corredores de Seguros (Peru), and Tuco&Tico (El Salvador).
To reach the final, the winners went through a multi-stage process. They and 10 other entrepreneurs (semifinalists of the second stage) had the opportunity to participate in an acceleration workshop in which professors from INCAE trained them in key topics such as operations, marketing and finance. Subsequently, they received mentoring in which they were able to deepen their knowledge in order to propose a growth project within their company. For more information, please contact Marilyn Fonseca, Director of Communications of the Latin American Center for Entrepreneurs at INCAE, at the following e-mail address: marilyn.fonseca@incae.edu
