Due to its outstanding practices in new technologies, Colombia has gone up seven positions in the global information technology report of 2013.
This improve in performance can be seen in the growing number of Internet users—about 6.634.659 people in the country have broadband subscriptions—and lower prices for this service.
Digital growth
Colombia has developed many projects supported by the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications (ITC) through the Digital Life Plan (Plan Vida Digital). The aim is to quadruple the number of Internet connections reaching 8.8 million connections in 2014, as well as raising the number of municipalities connected to optical fiber to 700. According to this plan, 50% of homes and SMEs will have Internet connection by 2014.
In order to promote digital enterprises, Viva Digital developed Apps.co, a project that helps entrepreneurs who want to break into the market with successful businesses through the development of mobile apps, software and content.
Well-known apps such as Tappsi—a service that facilitates finding cabs through smartphones—or Write it VS—a story writing game in which one competes to write faster than the rival—have been developed in Colombia.
Results are encouraging: ‘Tappsi’ has been downloaded over 50.000 times by iOS and Android users and ‘Write it Vs’ won the Best Educational App Award and the People’s Award in About.com’s online contests in the United States.
Diego Molano, ministry of ITC, suggests part of the apps business success lies on the fact that now Colombia has “31.000 people creating applications, business plans and software and app enterprises in the Apps.co program”.
Entrepreneurs
Andrés Barreto is an undeniable referent of Colombian entrepreneurship. Among the several digital projects he has cofounded, Grooveshark stands out as a music search engine with more than 35 million registered users and a traffic of about 100 to 110 million songs a month.
Another example of Colombian digital businesses is VoiceBunny, a web page with the world’s largest voice database: 135.000 audio samples with different tones and accents. VoiceBunny has provided services to large companies such as Pixar Animation Studios.
This innovative enterprise’s founder is Alexander Torrenegra, who participated in the Colombia 3.0 2012 event. In an interview for Invest in Bogota he said: “The Colombian market is very stable and has unique characteristics that make it attractive for foreign investment”.
Colombia 3.0
In the 2012 edition, Colombia 3.0 had 70.000 virtual participants, 4.000 in-person participants and around 40 conferences.
This year the event will be held between October 24th and 27th and will host digital content experts from around the world such as Marc Vidal, economic analyst specialized in new economics and founder of IDODI, and Burton Lee, director of the Innovative Enterprises program at Silicon Valley, among others. They will get together with businessmen and investors to talk about their experiences in application development and videogames and other topics related to the industry.
Learn more about Colombia 3.0 and discover why when it comes to technology and digital contents, the answer is Colombia.
