(Business Wire) The Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) today announced nine start-up finalists that will present at its second annual International Demo Day in San Francisco. International Demo Day is a program from Start-Up Brasil, an initiative from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), managed by the Brazilian Association for the Promotion of Brazilian Software Excellence (Softex). Two startups from InovAtiva, a program from the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade were also invited to present.
The nine Brazilian startups will be presenting their businesses to a panel of U.S. investors on December 10th at the second annual International Demo Day. The event will be held from 4:30pm-10:00pm in San Francisco.
Media and investors can register to attend International Demo Day here: http://bit.ly/Start-UpBrasilDemoDay
“We can estimate U.S. investors committed around USD $12 Billion to the Brazilian Private Equity / Venture Capital Industry in 2014 alone,” said David Barioni Neto, President of Apex-Brasil. “It’s safe to say that Silicon Valley VCs have discovered Brazil’s vibrant start-up scene. We capture 53% of all the Latin America venture capital deals. That´s why our agency has an office in Silicon Valley and many initiatives to present great investment opportunities to U.S. businessmen. The Demo Day is one of them.”
The International Demo Day event will have a panel of six local VCs in San Francisco evaluating the nine startups this year.
“These companies represent the leading technology and innovation that Brazil can produce, and we are proud to have them competing on an international stage and earning recognition and dollars from top-tier institutional investors from Silicon Valley,” said José Dieguez, Deputy Director for Software and IT Services for the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.
The nine finalists in Batch 2 that will be presenting in San Francisco include:
1. Econodata (big data analysis tool to identify leads for B2B companies)
2. MaxMilhas (a marketplace for buying and selling airline miles)
3. Nazar.IO (performance-monitoring tool for IT developers to tune applications)
4. Pinmypet (wearable for pets; GPS and health-monitoring collar)
5. Solides (behavioral mapping software for human resources hiring)
6. Superela (online support forum for women)
7. Tippz (real-time customer feedback tool for beverage manufacturers)
8. Urbotip (B2B/B2G collaboration software for running ‘smart cities’)
9. Virtual Avionics (professional flight simulation software and hardware)
“Our International Demo Day is an opportunity to show what is being created by entrepreneurs in other parts of the world. Different perspectives lead to new solutions that can benefit the entire world and the startups presenting in San Francisco are just a small part of what we can offer to solve global problems,” said Vitor Andrade, Softex Manager for Start-Up-Brasil. “Brazilian entrepreneurial ecosystem is really vibrant and Start-Up Brasil is an example of it. Startups from our previous batches already raised externally the double amount of capital invested by the government, which means for each R$ 1 invested on them, they have raised with private investors, angels and other initiatives more than R$ 2.”