The grand finale of Impulso Chileno took place today at the Casona Santa Rosa de Apoquindo. In its second version, the entrepreneurship contest sponsored by the Impulso Inicial Foundation, of the businessman Andrónico Luksic Craig and his family, awarded the 60 winners of this initiative that seeks to support entrepreneurs to move forward with their idea or business.
Journalists María Elena Dressel and Francisco Saavedra conducted this final, in which the 60 winners had to defend their projects before the jury. The jury was formed by Andrónico Luksic and Paola Luksic, representing the Fundación Impulso Incial; Julián Ugarte from the incubator Socialab; Carlos Díaz and Andrés Ibáñez from the UC School of Management; Alejandra Canessa and Juan Francisco Lecaros from the Simon of Cyrene Corporation, which has been supporting entrepreneurs for 23 years, along with the winners of the first version of Impulso Chileno, Karina Riquelme with her cosmetology project “Tissé” and José Aravena, awarded for his venture “Bolos de semillas”.
This second version of Impulso Chileno maintained its main focus and mission: to give an opportunity to people from all over the country who have a project to undertake, but have not obtained the necessary support to take it forward.
After listening to the various 2-minute pitches, the jury deliberated and, as in the first edition, awarded the entrepreneurs with $360 million to finance their ventures throughout the country, with the first 20 projects with the highest score receiving $10 million to invest in their ventures. These were followed by another 20 initiatives that received $5 million and the 20 third place winners received $3 million. In addition, all of them will receive academic support for 6 months from the School of Management of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, starting in March.
Among the projects that received the highest score in 2020 and were awarded $10 million to promote their ventures were those from the central, northern and southern regions, including three projects from the Araucanía region, Cristián Santibañez with Centro Integral de Rehabilitación Fisiológica, Miguel Valencia with his project “Fedusal 21 Sal de Mar” and Ana María Torres with “Agroelaborados de castaña” (Chestnut agro-processed products). Magallanes was represented by Zlowenka Basic, with “La Herbacería” and the Tarapacá region by Luis Astorga with the project “Agrícola Tamarugal”.
Women lead the list of winners of 10 million pesos with 13 projects. The winning initiatives are in the gastronomic, agricultural and sustainability sectors.
At the Grand Final, Andrónico Luksic, president of Fundación Impulso Inicial, sponsor of this great initiative, gave a message to this new generation of winners: “You are a real and reliable testimony of the great entrepreneurial force that exists in Chile. You have shown to be fighters, to have desire, to be willing to fight for your dreams and make them come true. I hope that participating in Impulso Chileno has been a positive experience for you and your families, and that the best is yet to come”.
The second version of Impulso Chileno also featured the presence of prominent speakers and entrepreneurs, who gave innovation talks and shared their reflections and diagnoses of entrepreneurship in Chile, including Barbarita Lara (mentor of the year 2018), Sebastián Salinas of Balloon Latam, Marisol Alarcón of Laboratoria, Nicolás Morales of Pegas con Sentido and Rodrigo Saá of Humind.
The day ended with a talk by impersonator Stefan Kramer, who shared his story as an entrepreneur.
Although the meeting was of a private nature, it was attended by more than 700 people from the private, public, academic and innovation worlds through the business and entrepreneurship incubators.
It should be noted that last year Impulso Chileno already awarded 60 entrepreneurs in the country -90% of them from regions-, who during the first semester of 2019 received funding to invest in their project and attended classes and mentoring given by members of the School of Management of the UC.
The 60 winners of this second version are already published on the Contest’s social networks and at www.impulsochileno.cl.