Start-Up Nation Central teams up with Inter-American Development Bank to promote Latin American partnerships

ConnectAmericas, which was developed with the support of Google, DHL, Sealand, Facebook, and Mastercard, is an online business platform that helps small and medium-sized enterprises from Latin America and the Caribbean internationalize their business by providing them with access to communities of clients, suppliers and investors in the region and around the world.

"The Israeli tech and innovation sector is receiving substantial attention from around the world in general, and especially during the global pandemic. Our partnership with IDB plays a major role in connecting the ecosystems, allowing us to identify Israeli partners to jointly develop and adapt solutions to the challenges faced by Latin America and the Caribbean," said Eugene Kandel, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central, a Tel Aviv-based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the Israeli tech sector. "We are honored to collaborate with the IDB Group, one of the leading development banks in the world, which helps its constituent countries overcome today’s most pressing challenges.”

Start-Up Nation Central CEO Eugene Kandel. Photo: Yuval Chen

SNC and IDB have created profiles for more than 5,000 Israeli companies on the ConnectAmericas platform. The accounts are verified by Start-Up Nation Central and 200 of them are managed directly by startup representatives. As part of the collaboration, SNC provides support services and manages the introductions and interactions between the companies signed through the partnership.

The IDB Lab, the group’s innovation lab, will provide the sandbox to pilot selected solutions addressing the challenges of Covid-19, in order to scale the successful ones through the group’s operations. The partnerships will be announced during the Outsource2LAC Virtual Week 2020, which is being held through July 22.

"Covid-19 will accelerate the shift to digital, and reshape the business landscape. Latin America and the Caribbean must be part of the digital future," said Ana María Rodríguez, Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge at IDB. "The alignment of public and private strategies is, without doubt, a necessary condition for success. For this reason, we will continue to forge high-value partnerships at both regional and multilateral levels. Our sustained and fruitful work with Start-Up Nation Central is one great example of this."