Colombia & bidx
With an estimate of 48 million inhabitants, Colombia is one of the largest countries in South America. It is the fourth biggest economy in Latin America with a GDP of about $680 Billion. It therefore makes sense that it comes in seventh place when looking at the total number of business plans on all bidx portals. It is only preceded by Ecuador when it comes to South American countries.
What product, and to whom?
Petroleum is Colombia’s main export, followed by manufacturing, which contributes to 12% of the country’s exports, and grows at a rate of over 10% a year. Recently, the Colombian government has shown interest in exporting modern Colombian pop culture to the world.
Being the home of Gabriel García Márquez, it is not strange that Publishing comes in as first industry for the Colombian businesses on our portals. Food Production and Trade comes next, which is comparable to the overall businesses for all countries on our portals. The percentage of Colombian businesses focusing on education is far more than average compared to other countries.
When it comes to the types of customers Colombian businesses on our portals target, they do not differ remarkably from the rest of the world.
Is it possible that entrepreneurs tend to focus more on neighboring countries and countries that share a similar culture? We had a look at what other countries Colombian businesses choose to operate in.
Colombia’s 3 neighboring countries, Peru, Ecuador and Brazil came among the top 10 countries that are targeted. Other Latin American and Spanish speaking countries like Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Spain, also make the list.
Now, let’s meet the Colombian entrepreneurs!
Obviously, the majority (70%) of the entrepreneurs doing business in Colombia are actually from Columbia. The other 30% are mostly from Argentina, Peru, USA and The Netherlands (home of bidx).
We are always happy to see female entrepreneurs fighting the gender divide in business. Regrettably, The amount of female entrepreneurs in Colombia is slightly below our overall average, with 25% as opposed to 34%.
Most of the Colombian businesses are based in the capital, Bogota, followed by Medellin. Santa Marta, Cali and Armenia. The basic measurement for the quality of the business plans on our platform, is their complet they are. Our algorithm gives different weights to different fields based on how important they are to investors. The average completion score for businesses in Colombia is about 45%, however, we also wanted to see whether this score varies for the different Colombian cities.
We also wanted to see when our Colombian members are most active. Thursday turns out to be the winner by far! Most business proposals are created on this day by Colombian members.
What about the Investors and Mentors focusing in Colombia?
Mentors and investors specify on which countries they are focusing in their profile. We wanted to find out in which way investors would like to invest in Colombia and what expertise the mentors offer to Colombian entrepreneurs.
When it comes to the investors, they prefer to give loans to startups, rather than taking equity. However, 40% of them have no problem doing both.
As for the mentors, their support ranges from helping with the Business models to giving financial advice. They also showed interest in helping entrepreneurs with their sales and management strategies.
In conclusion, it’s good to know more about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of a country. Today, we had a quick glance at Colombia and we hope our Data Science team continues to discover more about specific countries through the bidx platform.