The dream of Brazil’s IT visionaries is closer to becoming reality, on April 15 a StartUp program created by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) was launched by the government, the call for applications from interested startups is on the Start-Up Brasil program’s website (2013 call for applications, now offline).
Around 30% of the competing startups will be international, applications open on April 25 and close on May 31, the results of this first stage will be released from June 25 on the CNPq website and in the Official Gazette of the Union.
The program will also offer another opportunity for those who don’t pass the first stage, the same rules from the first stage’s call for applications will be used, and it will begin on November 19 with results released from December 16.
To carry out this project the government selected some companies already established in the market to act as accelerators for the startups, there will be nine in total, but those announced are Aceleratech, Microsoft, Papaya, Pipa and Wayra, these companies will act as incubators and should support eight to ten startups.
The government’s goal is to accelerate 150 startups by 2014, for this it anticipates financial support of R$ 40 million, offering R$ 200 thousand to each startup, it also expects at least 40 startups to benefit from this project, which is part of the Strategic Software and Information Technology Services Program (TI Maior).