El Mercurio Newspaper Highlighted Uruguay’s Development as a Hub for Business and Innovation

Uruguay participated for the first time in South Summit Madrid, an annual event that has become one of southern Spain’s most important innovation and entrepreneurship events. The Uruguayan delegation, comprised of 14 technology companies, promoted the country’s advantages as a business and innovation hub in Latin America.

An article in Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper, “Uruguay’s road to becoming one of the most attractive innovation hubs in Latin America,” reviewed the country’s achievements on this road.

In an interview with the media, Sabrina Sauksteliskis, the executive director of Uruguay Innovation Hub, pointed out that “Uruguay is a good gateway for startups from abroad to enter Latin America and has a cultural approach, with the same schedule and language and highly qualified talent.

Meanwhile, Inés Bonicelli, the business developer of the same government program aimed at strengthening Uruguay’s role as an innovation hub, recalled that Uruguay is currently co-leading, together with the United States and Canada, the entrepreneurship program of the Alliance for Economic Prosperity in the Americas (APEP).

Regarding the country’s position as a business hub and its good conditions for being the innovation hub in the region, the Investment Projects Manager of Uruguay XXI, Alvaro Brunini, emphasized to the media the excellent base they have. “We have a great development of the software industry, both due to the emergence of important local companies that have internationalized, as well as foreign companies that have settled in the country,” he said.

Sauksteliskis assessed the future as “promising” and highlighted the effervescence of the Uruguayan ecosystem. “We have a hotbed of young people who are digital natives, and that cuts across public and private education,” he added.

The article closed with a reflection by Brunini on the “great advantage” the country has over other markets based on its political, economic, democratic, and social stability. “It is a good place to try things out, where local and foreign companies can test innovations in a controllable environment and then scale up to other countries in the region. That gives an advantage both in innovation and in more traditional sectors,” he concluded.