Zafrales, a startup incubated at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at Universidad ORT Uruguay, won the third edition of Elevator Day on Monday, August 12, an event organized by Banco Santander. The event, which takes place once a year, brings together young people from entrepreneurship centers at public and private universities across the country.
During this edition, six projects from six different universities were presented and evaluated by the institution’s management team, led by Gustavo Trelles, Country Head of Santander Uruguay; Pablo Gaudio, Commercial Director; Patricia Dopazo, Director of Technology and Operations; Federico Lamaison, Communications and Marketing Manager; and María de la Paz Goldaracena, Manager of Santander Universities and Universia.
The recognition awarded to Zafrales—whose founders are Mauricio Pintado, a graduate of ORT’s Specialization Diploma in Human Resources, and Rodrigo Pereira—includes a prize from Banco Santander worth US$5,000 in services, after the jury deemed it the most outstanding startup for its innovation, job creation, and scalability.
Zafrales aims to solve the problems that agricultural businesses face when hiring seasonal workers by leveraging technology. “It is an app through which farmhands looking for seasonal work can submit their profiles, and employers can access that database, which is divided into different categories, such as fence installers, harvesters, or pickers,” explained Enrique Topolansky, coordinator of the CIE.
The project went from selling 8,000 units in 2018 to exceeding 80,000 in the first six months of this year.