Start-Up Chile Chooses More Than One-Hundred Startups to Incubate

As many as 124 young entrepreneurs have been selected for Chile’s new round of its startup incubation program, with officials from Start-Up Chile announcing that they would invest $3.2 million in these new companies.
Of 1,900 applicants, 94 projects were selected. Each entrepreneur will get $35,000 in seed fund and a working visa for a year. They first need to stay in Chile for a few months, participating in workshops and other events that the Chilean authorities will organize as part of their effort to foster a climate of entrepreneurship in the country.
According to reports, two foreign entrepreneurs were recently granted visa to travel to Chile and put their business idea to test.
Start-Up Chile has offered to provide $85,000 in additional funding for startups that are generating revenue and wanting to expand in Latin America. Successful entrepreneurs can scale up operation with this additional cash.
“We are focused on improving in this matter and we are receiving amazing ideas and very qualified entrepreneurs,” she said. “We are also very pleased by the increase in the number of women who applied to the seed program, that went from our historical 15% to a 20% of women leading startups.”
The selected projects for seed are predominantly from Latin America (64%) and North America (16%). The most represented industries this time were IT (31%) education (12%), and health (11%).
Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean government that seeks to attract early-phase, high-potential entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups using Chile as a platform to go global. The program offers its participants a global network in order to achieve this.