On Nov 29th, 2012, the Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation has launched the Brazilian version of Startup Chile. Startup Brasil is a program that will involve several partnerships and a budget of R$40 millions on 3 years (US$ 18.8 millions, US$ 6.26 millions for year), from 2013 to 2016.

The program is done in two steps:

• Choose 6 accelerators are selected
• Each accelerator have than to choose 8 startups each, and has 12 months to accelerate them with a budget of R$200k each (US$ 94.5k)

Accelerators have up to the end of Jan 2013 to send their applications, the selection will be published mid-March to start the startup selection process soon after. Only 25% of all startups can be foreigner based and all of them need to be connected to IT in someway. So social startups are not included. The program it’s quite different than the one in Chile: the budget is higher (us$ 10 millions for year), the acceleration is done by the program itself, startups get US$ 40k of equity-free seed capital and there are no rules about startups’ origins and type of business.

Globally it seams to be a good proposal and the fact that it includes accelerators it makes it more professional. These last few months Brazil has seen the poping up of several accelerators all around the country. Some good, other less. We hope the program will be able to identify the right one to give the opportunities to many good professionals to prove their quality.

Startups wanting to participating, need to wait April 2013 to know more about   the selection process

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About Davide Ballestra

Swiss Digital entrepreneur currently based in São Paulo.

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