Round Pegs wins £125k award to launch its business in London

Round Pegs, creating entrepreneurship as a service, has been announced as the winner of The LatAm Edge Awards 2017, a celebration of Latin-American startups, aiming to expand its operations into the UK, Europe and Asia.

The company provides a white label, scalable business platform specialised in designing and building startup innovations within enterprises.

In its first year of operations, Round Pegs validated its business model for possible expansion into markets outside of Latin America. Since then, the company has enabled four new digital businesses for enterprises, which adds up to over $30m (around £22m) in non-profit value.

Pedro Donati, CEO of Round Pegs, said: “We are incredibly excited to have won the The LatAm Edge Awards this year.

“Coming to London as a finalist in such a prestigious competition has been an amazing experience and the mentors have been very supportive.

“Since its inception a year ago, Round Pegs has been designed to have an international footprint and we are happy to have been given the opportunity to set up our business in a country which has a true global mindset.”

This year’s awards offered a prize worth £125k to help the winning business launch in London with a support network designed to help the company accelerate operations in the UK.

The prize includes two hot desks at a WeWork’s coworking office in London, as well as a host of service support to help Round Pegs set up its business in the UK.

These include accountancy services from Blick Rothenberg, legal support by the Joelson law firm, new business development in the UK by Trade Horizons, marketing and PR from GrupoCASAUK, digital campaigns by Eydos Digital, coaching from Sapovalova Coaching and market research by Talent Capital.

Creator of The LatAm Edge Awards and CEO of GrupoCasa, Sandra Sinicco, commented: “I’m delighted to congratulate Round Pegs on winning The LatAm Edge Awards 2017 and look forward to helping the company expand into the UK and Europe.

“Their proof of concept was strong and there is a huge market opportunity for them in the UK. This year, we had over 150 people at the awards ceremony, an increase of over 100 per cent since the 2016 awards. It is great to see so much interest from diverse industries.”

Sinicco’s focus now moves on to The LatAm Edge Awards 2018, which she expects to grow and attract even more entries. Similar high-value prizes will be on offer to companies from Latin America and there are future plans to expand the awards to address other geographical markets too.

In addition, Sinicco has created a similar network to support bringing The LatAm Edge Awards to Brazil, which will launch in January 2018. These will work in the same way by giving UK startups the opportunity to expand into Brazil with a prize of similar support services to the existing awards.

Sinicco concluded: “In the same way that Latin American companies come to the UK, the new awards will provide the opportunity for UK startups interested in the Latin American market to start from Brazil with a support network designed to help the company establish connections rapidly.

“More additional value will come from the ones that bring real innovation for people facing structural problems related to smartcities, traffic, pollution, health, energy, food and transport.”

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