LatAm Startups

A couple of years ago Victor Salinas, CEO at Aiontech started to think about internationalizing his company. With over a million dollars in sales in the local market, going to new markets made sense as a next step for this Fintech company.

In Mexico, he has closed deals with big clients including HSBC bank. He then thought about how the US was a natural market to start an internationalization process, but also about Canada, a country he had the opportunity to study just a few years before founding his company in Mexico.

Initially, Aiontech was accepted as part of the bootcamp program at LatAm Startups. He started the validation process, which then led to a three month softlanding program where he finally began the market entry strategy for one of Aiontech’s products called SmartCouncil (launched in the first quarter of 2018).

"We started this process two years ago. At the beginning, the idea was to learn about the Canadian market and be a part of the Fintech community. We found an ecosystem of very creative companies, like LatAm Startups, willing to support Latin American companies to bring their products into the Canadian market. That's when we started to explore expanding our business in Canada" says Victor Salinas

After this experience, Victor returned to the program with a new spin off, EasyTransfer, which also was successfully launched in the Canadian market in 2018.

After two softlanding programs and a lot of experience in how to navigate the ecosystem in Canada, Victor applied to be part of the Startup Visa program. After an interview with LatAm Startups' board of directors, his company was approved to join the Startup Visa program at LatAm Startups. Now Aiontech will start an acceleration process with a clear objective in sales and funding, while also improving the technology for the two products Aiontech has launched in the Canadian market.

"It has been a challenge exploring this ecosystem, learning how to present our products, create a business plan and also design a marketing strategy for a specific target”.

"Now with all this experience we're going to start selling in Canada, but also find investment to hire local talent, improve our product to integrate new functionalities (such as AI and blockchain) with the intention to learn about the financial behaviour of our clients and offer new benefits on the platform. We're expecting to grow our sales by at least 10% in the next 6 months in North America" says Victor Salinas.

LatAm Startups is very proud to have companies like Aiontech as a part of the Startup Visa program that we're offering for high-tech companies from emerging markets.