March 9, 2007
Mountain View, California (Silicon Valley)
BoliviaMall.com appears at Silicon Valley
BoliviaMall.com, the leader in e-business in Bolivia, participated in the forum entitled ¨United Nations meets Silicon Valley¨ organized by INTEL and the Global Alliance for ITC, a special United Nations committee created to support the Objectives of the Millennium through technology. This committee is presided by Craig Barret (Chairman of the Board of Intel) and is made up by personalities of businesses and government from all over the world.
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The meeting took place on February 28, and its objective was to bring governments, NGOs and the private sectors together. Silicon Valley, with the largest concentration of technology and capital in the world is a focal point for technological innovation. |
Craig Barret, Chairman of the Board of Intel, receiving a charango from Percy Prieto and Rodrigo Prieto, partners of BoliviaMall.com |
The meeting aimed to take advantage of the level of innovation by inviting outstanding personalities of Silicon Valley (Google, Microsoft, INTEL, RedHat, etc.) to participate in forums in order to generate guidelines to eliminate technological disparities.
BoliviaMall.com was one of three organizations invited to present successful cases on the use of technology in developing countries. In this presentation, Rodrigo Prieto, BoliviaMall partner, stressed on the growth of the company as well as the social impact generated in its six years of existence.
In part of his presentation he mentioned that ¨Bolivia is the fourth poorest country in the Americas. It ranks in the 115th place in the Human Development Index, 64% of the population lives in poverty and only 5% of the people have access to internet¨. |
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Mr. Prieto went on to say that notwithstanding the above statistics, BoliviaMall’s business model evolved to prosper exporting opportunities that hide behind these statistics, adding that the company is 100% internet based, has grown enormously in the past six years generating at the same time a great social impact. The company exports more that 6000 Bolivian products, provided by over 750 artisans and small enterprises to more than 70 countries world wide. |
The BoliviaMall case was discussed and commented in the ¨Venture Capitalism and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals — Is there really a fortune at
the bottom of the pyramid?¨ forum. The forum included as members of the panel: Professor Andrew Isaacs from the MBA Program of Berkeley University, Stuart Davidson from the Acumen Risk Investment Fund, Claudia Munce from IBM´s Venture Capital Group, Ismail Khaled Senior Advisor of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Egypt and Peter Fröhler from UNCTAD.
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With this recognition BoliviaMall, a fully owned Bolivian company, enhances its regional leadership and shows the capacity of the Bolivian private sector to create jobs, innovate and grow with social impact.
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