Creating a venture ecosystem in Brazil

In 2000, the Brazilian government’s Agency for Innovation (Financiadora de Estudos e Projectos, or FINEP) with support from the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) unveiled a program to address these needs. FINEP had spent a year assessing the obstacles and challenges that confronted technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The result was the program called INOVAR (Innovation). In the 12 years since INOVAR’s debut, the program has had two iterations (INOVAR I, from 2001-2006, and INOVAR II, from 2007 – 2012) and has been recognized as a role model for government efforts to stimulate a venture capital ecosystem. In many cases, this paper will discuss the two phases as a single entity, largely because the two merged quite naturally. We present here a brief background on private equity in both Latin America and Brazil, and then explore the genesis of INOVAR, the details of the program, and its results. The paper concludes with challenges to be addressed.