According to the study The Phenomenon of Entrepreneurship Migration to Mexico, made by the Endeavor accelerator, of a total of 328 startup founders in Mexico, 31% were identified as foreigners and this group has created at least 9,800 jobs and raised 1,720 million dollars in capital from Mexico City.
After working for companies such as Citigroup and Telmex in Colombia, Iván Ariza migrated to Mexico to start a series of ventures, especially in the e-commerce and digital delivery sectors. EnvioDivino.com, Rapiddo.Mx and Blako, were his first steps in the world of e-commerce logistics. Later, he was a leader of Logistics at SinDelantal, to later found Cargamos, a last-mile company based on dark stores.
Ariza is one of the Latin Americans who have migrated to Mexico and have begun to undertake. Cargamos was founded in 2019 and is dedicated to last-mile delivery, through a fleet of 10,000 delivery people and the goal of building 300 warehouses.
According to the study The Phenomenon of Entrepreneurship Migration to Mexico, done by the accelerator Endeavor, of a total of 328 startup founders in Mexico, 31% were identified as foreigners and this group has created at least 9,800 jobs and raised 1,720 million of dollars in capital from Mexico City.
Perhaps the most emblematic case of this phenomenon in recent times is that of Carlos García Otati, the Venezuelan who came to Mexico to found Kavak, a company that in just four years became the first Mexican company to achieve a market valuation higher than the 1,000 million dollars, that is, he turned into a unicorn.
Most of the foreign entrepreneurs who come to Mexico to start a business are Europeans, with 49%, South Americans, with 26%, and Asians, with 13 percent. The main reasons they choose the country are a mix of business (90%), professional (63%), and personal (57%) reasons.
The main reason for migrating to Mexico is the size of the market, according to the opinion of 39% of those surveyed by Endeavor. Added to this is the fact that entrepreneurs discover that, in Mexico, there are still many functions to perform within the markets in which they want to start their business. Also the strategic location of Mexico, as the neighbor to the south of the United States and as a door to this country from South America, was one of the reasons why the entrepreneurs decided to come to Mexico.
For Ariza, putting Mexico in the context of Latin American countries serves to see the country as a strong economy, both at the population level and in terms of the deployment and penetration of electronic commerce. And if it is considered that Brazil has another language or that “it is a continent within another continent”, as the manager says, Mexico is the country that makes the most sense.
“Mexico is a country strong enough to become a benchmark in the region. Its proximity to the United States and the door that it opens to Latin America mean that due to its geography, its politics, and its economy, you can do many things, ”he said.
The study uses the example of several entrepreneurs who are now part of the startup ecosystem in Mexico, such as Ricardo Martínez Finger, co-founder of the Jüsto home supermarket; Nima Purshab, co-founder and director of the wage-on-demand company Minu; Diana Popa, founder and director of the information platform for the Extensio field and Joao Matos Albino, co-founder of the Urbvan mobility app.
In the opinion of the founder of Cargamos, people who migrate to undertake in another country have to make a much greater effort to ensure their success, because it is more difficult for them to go back and start over.
Ariza married a man from Guadalajara and now has three daughters. Whether because of culture or cost of living, many of the entrepreneurs consulted by Endeavor fell in love with Mexico and that is why they decided to undertake, beyond markets and ambitions.
Source: eleconomista.com.mx
