For Uber, we had detected this potential in 2013, and as we began our rapid global expansion to eventually over 60 nations, we chose Bogotá to be our first step into South America. Our services were quickly embraced by their tech-savvy citizens, and the flexible earnings potential of driving with Uber were welcomed quickly by drivers who appreciated a new way to earn a living. A living that, according to a 2019 profile by the Inter-American Development Bank, represented on-average nearly three times Colombia’s minimum hourly wage.

The popularity of the service grew widely across Colombia, and six years later we had expanded across the nation to 88,000 drivers serving two million regular riders. Because of the mass local adoption of the service, the rich local talent pool, and the optimistic economic outlook for the nation, Uber invested heavily. We opened our regional headquarters in Bogotá, and staffed it with over three hundred full time employees—most of whom are Colombian home-grown talent. In 2019, we selected Bogotá as the destination for our third Center of Excellence in Latin America, and we excitedly poised to directly invest USD $40 million and create 600 new direct jobs.

Justin Kintz is Über’s vice president for global public policy

However, by the end of 2019, it was evident we were lacking even the most basic institutional support from the Colombian government for making such a massive investment in the nation. Despite the fact that Uber Colombia was the first such service in South America, it still had been the last to be licensed and regulated by the national government. In the meantime, our industry had over 80 governments across Latin America proceed ahead sensible licensing, including cities like Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and La Paz, states like Mendoza and Jalisco, and entire nations like Brazil, Peru and Chile. (Relatedly, in this same time period, dozens of nations worldwide had established their own rideshare rules in short order.) Despite the Duque administration’s public push to move Colombia into an “Orange Economy” that embraces the digital sector, Uber’s investments instead were treated with ambivalence.

For many years, Uber has advocated for ridesharing regulations in Colombia that were designed to protect the public with safety standards and pricing transparency and to formalize the economy with driver licensing and taxation. Uber even advocated strongly for plans to provide hardship relief to the Colombian taxi industry in the event their drivers struggled in a period of changing consumer trends. To ensure we were practicing what we were preaching, Uber went so far as to self-regulate and collect and remit appropriate taxes despite lacking the governmental mandates, and despite the government not equally enforcing tax on our rideshare competitors or taxis. This was done at great cost to Uber in order to maintain our safety standards at a consistent global level, to create a good example for our entire industry, and to support Colombian communities. Notably, Uber’s services to-date have helped generate roughly 130 billion Colombian pesos (roughly USD $40 million) in revenue for the government.

The calls for regulation had been ignored. Recognizing the fragility of the investment environment, Uber announced in late 2019 that we would not be opening our Center of Excellence in Bogotá, and will be forced to find a different regional destination. This bad news was made much worse a few days before Christmas, when the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce ordered Uber Colombia to shut down, citing unfair competition with taxis. (Importantly, none of the other rideshare companies with nearly identical business models have received similar treatment.)

As Uber begins to close our ride services in Colombia (UberEATS continues food-delivery operations unaffected), we are aggrieved for the nearly ninety thousand drivers who lose this earning opportunity. We feel discouraged for the millions of users who rely on our services to remain mobile safely and conveniently. We are disappointed to see such a step backwards for a nation otherwise poised to move forward. The spirit of the people of Colombia is clearly ready to break out from behind the limits of protectionism and cronyism, and its political leaders have said the right things. This debate provides a real opportunity for those leaders to actually apply the promises they have made, otherwise, it may create a chilling effect on investment and innovation for many years to come. Colombia needs #UnaSolucionParaUberYa.

Editor’s note: Finance Colombia reached out to Colombia’s Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio to give them a chance to submit their position. As of press time, we received this statement: “Las decisiones de los trámites y los procesos adelantados por la Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio serán adoptadas dentro de los términos estipulados en las disposiciones legales que los regulen, atendiendo el debido proceso.” (The decisions of the formalities and processes put forward by the Superintendence of Industry & Commerce will be adopted within the terms stipulated in the legal dispositions that regulate it, attending due process.)

Photo courtesy of Über

This is a guest editorial and does not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of Finance Colombia. 

The investment will target infrastructure financing and be coordinated by the government in Tokyo transferring the $5 million USD to the IDB “Contingent Recovery PPP Preparation Program.”

According to the Inter-American Development Bank, the move “builds upon and complements the IDB and Japan’s long track record of partnering through such platforms as the Co-financing for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CORE) program and the Japan Quality Infrastructure Initiative (JQI).”

READ MORE: IDB Loans Davivienda $200 Million to Finance Mortgages in Colombia

The agreement was signed in Argentina a the IDB’s annual board of governors meeting in Mendoza by Toshiyuki Yasui of Japan and Alexandre da Rosa of IDB.

(Photo credit: Francisco Diez)

The daily redeye flight will leave the Peruvian capital at 10:15 pm and arrive at 4:00 am in Mendoza, with the return flight departing Argentina at 6:05 am and landing back in Lima at 7:55 am.

The route will be operated by an Airbus A320 aircraft with 150 seats. Travelers can already book reservations on the new route through Avianca’s online system or by calling the airline.

READ MORE: Colombia’s Wine Scene Has Come a Long Way, Says Top Sommelier

Martin Torres, sales manager for Avianca in Argentina, highlighted the better connectivity this will provide to one of the iconic wine centers of South America.

“We are very excited to announce this new route, which connects Mendoza with the airline’s hub in Peru,” said Torres. “With this daily flight, Avianca encourages more accessible tourism and streamlines connections with important markets for travelers including Colombia, Mexico, and Peru to Mendoza.”

To support these efforts, the U.S. information technology and services company recently appointed Eduardo Almeida as its new vice president and general manager of Unisys for Latin America.

Photo: Eduardo Almeida, vice president and general manager of Unisys for Latin America. (Credit: Unisys)

Based in São Paulo, the former Cisco and Genesys executive will be looking for growth in a variety both the public and private sectors in a number of different verticals. To find out more, Finance Colombia Executive Editor Loren Moss recently sat down with Almeida to detail where these opportunities exist and what business segments are becoming the biggest priorities for Unisys in Latin America.

Loren Moss: First of all, welcome. Can you tell me a little bit about Unisys’ current presence in Latin America? Where are the strengths and weaknesses? Where are the opportunities, and where do you see areas that you can make an immediate impact?

Eduardo Almeida: Thank you very much, Loren, for the welcome. Yes, I’m very excited with this opportunity to join an amazing company with around 100 years of tradition in the Latin American region. As a matter of fact, Unisys has been present in Colombia for about 65 years, so we are not a new kid on the block. We know very much how to support the country’s needs to improve productivity, to improve education quality, and to better serve Colombia’s citizens.

I’m feeling very good because there are so many things to be done right now. I arrived to find an amazing organization, an amazing team here — not only in Colombia but across the region. We are excited to increase our presence in the region in the next fiscal year starting in January. In general, we believe that we can make a big difference in the verticals that we have. I would say that we have three pillars: the commercial space where we have different industries, financial services, and government. We want to believe that our solutions can really improve government metrics and our customers’ business outcomes across different industries.

When it comes to serving Colombian customers, we’ve been very successful here, not only with government, but especially in the financial sector business. We were very successful in the last couple of quarters closing new business, and we have had some customers here in the country for many, many years. We have contracts that have been in place for more than 20 years now, so we believe that customers are also valuing the relationship that they have with Unisys. And we have closed some important references here like Avianca and Exito, the supermarket, just to name a few. So the strategy has been successful.

Now, looking ahead, in terms of opportunity, we are right now putting together our strategic plan. We want Unisys Colombia to be a real Colombian company, so we are looking to further our presence here. We are looking at government opportunities with a more strategic approach — a mid- to long-term approach. We want to partner with government, not only in the traditional space of technology, but making sure that in the long run — and I mean three or five years from now — we have a more valuable presence in the country.

Loren Moss: What are some specific types of initiatives that may be in the future?

“Argentina is really considering technology and digitalization as a country strategy. And, for the first time, we see Colombia having a digital agenda in terms of government.” – Eduardo Almeida

Eduardo Almeida: Helping the government to improve citizens’ experience dealing with technology in public services in the country will make a big difference to us. When we see investment in space like digital cities, Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data analytics, a company like Unisys can serve this country better by being close to government agencies and offering the best technology to allow government to leverage those services to the citizens. So, this is pretty much what we are considering here: How we are segmenting the industry.

We are digging a little bit deeper in terms of knowing what the country’s aspirations are and determining how Unisys can play a relevant role in supporting those aspirations to make them a reality. I know this is a pretty 30,000-feet-deep perspective, but this is where we are going now.

Loren Moss: Understood. Now, you mentioned having a bigger presence in Colombia, and it’s interesting because Unisys, if I’m not mistaken, you have a “Development and Excellence Center” there in Bogotá. And, here outside of Medellin, in Rionegro, you have, an operations center that — at least the the last time I was there — has around 400 people. But I think that you have expanded and grown that operation since then. Am I correct?

Eduardo Almeida: You are right and you are very precise. We do have this presence in Rionegro and Medellín. We are expanding that, and we are expanding based on the contracts we have closed recently with some customers. Some of them were mentioned to you previously, and they reflect the expansions that we are making Rionegro and in Medellín.

Now, as far as Bogota, we are kicking up the presence, which is more connected to the financial services industry. We are just hiring two guys here to help us expand business in this vertical — a cornerstone to Unisys in Colombia. So, yes, we are expanding. But more than that, what we are doing now is to realign our organization, which is pretty big. You can imagine. We have 1,200 people working in Colombia today for Unisys.

So we are no longer talking only about enterprise computing — we are talking about mobility, we are talking about cloud services, application services, we are talking about Big Data analytics. And we need to serve our customers in these different technologies, with these different technologies, according to their demands. We are making sure that we invest our talent where our customers expect Unisys to invest. We see this big market transition now.

For a company like us with such a big investment in the country, and our number of people, it’s not very easy to turn around the organization to reposition those technologies as a company priority. But we are doing that right now, and hopefully we are going to close this very soon. Maybe by the end of this calendar year, we’re going to have all the organization in place to invest even more communication in those technologies.

Loren Moss: If we look beyond Colombia. If we look at Latin America and you have your big six economies — Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Peru — where are the emerging markets here in the neighborhood? What countries are you seeing growth in that maybe are newly-emerging beyond those “traditional” players?

Eduardo Almeida: The point is we should also position this in a different perspective: Which country has a digital agenda? In government, it is important to have a minister responsible for digital strategy or digital inclusion, right? So, we can go with very few countries.

“We do have this presence in Rionegro and Medellín. We are expanding that, and we are expanding based on the contracts we have closed recently with some customers.” – Eduardo Almeida

Now we see that Argentina — and I was just there — has meetings between customers and government. We see that Argentina is really considering technology and digitalization as a country strategy. And, for the first time, we see Colombia having a digital agenda in terms of government. Argentina is doing well in this regard. I think they are ahead of the curve. Peru is also a big surprise and doing great in terms of having a digital strategy. Now, of course the penetration is very high in Chile compared to other countries because they started 10 years ago. So, it is not new to them. So, those are the countries that we see.

Mexico, depending on where you are, is also a very interesting opportunity to us, particularly in the public sector. In the financial sector we understand that Colombia has the largest market after Mexico. Now, Brazil is suffering big time because of the crisis that happened a couple of years ago. The country is starting to emerge again, so probably there are some analysts that are saying that the country’s GDP will be positive in calendar-year 2017, which will be a big surprise. Even though it’s low, it still is positive.

Another thing is that both Colombia and Brazil will have federal elections next year, and we also know that when you have such elections, the government itself starts to redesign some of the priorities that they have. And we understand that the second half of 2018 will be more exciting in terms of technology adoption by government, mainly because elections will be part of the past, and in the new administration we need to start investing and executing.

Loren Moss: Last question: I think that one advantage of living there in the Southern Cone is that you’re closer to wine country. Are there any particular labels or viñas that you’re drinking this year that you would recommend picking up?

Eduardo Almeida: Absolutely! We should have more time to talk about that whenever you go to Chile and Argentina. There are so many great wine producers there. And I will tell you something, when I joined Unisys — I started October 2 — I decided to take a few days off in order to recharge my battery in Mendoza.

On my trip to Mendoza, I had a quick pitstop in our office in Buenos Aires. I had meetings with the local people there, without even presenting myself. I just said, “I’m the new employee here, so tell me a little bit about what you guys do here.” It was so interesting, because they welcomed me as a big fan without knowing that I was becoming the new person responsible for operations. And then I went to Mendoza. How familiar are you with Mendoza? Have you been there?

Loren Moss: That’s the heart of malbec country. Their malbec is as good as in Spain.

Eduardo Almeida: Yeah, exactly. They’re very good. I like the Viña Cobos producer very much. It belongs to a guy called Paul Hobbs, who is a great producer in California and who also has vineyards in Romania. He produces Mendoza. So Mendoza is good, and of course, Chile is in my heart in terms of wines. I like the carménere. I think that early in 2018, we’re going to get together here again to celebrate the New Year. We’re going to have to have a wine together here in Colombia.