Exactly 50 years ago Frederick Smith bought a small fleet of aircraft so that a document or letter could be anywhere in the United States in less than 24 hours, so he wanted to materialize the idea that had already been rejected at Yale University when he devised a “hub” to centralize uploads and downloads. Thus was born Federal Express, today FedEx, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and of which the Smith family still holds 51%. The company’s number one is currently Richard Smith, son of Frederick, who is rapidly converting it into an e-commerce platform. It operates in 220 countries and territories worldwide, has 530,000 employees, a network of 697 aircraft and a fleet of 210,000 vehicles: they carry out 16,500 million shipments a day. The company arrived in Argentina in 1992 enthusiastic about the privatization of the mail which gave rise to the fierce struggle within the government of Carlos Menem. It is managed by Silvia Prette and they process an average of 3,500 packages a day, of which 65% are exports, while 35% are imports. They receive 7 containers a day and another 11 leave. Prette says that through their platform they help export to SMEs and connect the needs of companies and individuals. One of the fastest growing segments is what they call the nostalgia market, with shipments from dulce de leche to yerba. Also, wine.

The prize for positive actions promoted by the Swiss-Argentine Chamber of Commerce has been launched in the midst of the pandemic, has become an opportunity to take the pulse of those companies ranging from Nestlé, ABB to Novartis with weight in various sectors such as food, laboratories and cosmetics. Ambassador Hans Ruedi Bortis together with the head of the Chamber, Ernesto Kohen, leader in high-end watchmaking, commented on the inconvenience for accessing critical inputs of numerous companies, “although they were sorted according to priorities, such as tubes for Edenor boilers”, slipped. In addition, the companies are more than concerned about the dollar debt with their foreign suppliers which in some cases amounts to 35 billion dollars in total. The ambassador stressed that “no company Switzerland is leaving the country and, indeed, they are analyzing investments in the energy sector”. Of course, trade is meager at just 1,500 million dollars with a surplus for Argentina which exports 90% of the gold that the Swiss use in their watch industry and precision equipment.

Arsen Tomsky studied at the Faculty of Mathematics of Yakutsk State University. In Yakutia, deep in Siberia, local taxi companies doubled their fares as temperatures dropped. Tomsky got in touch with a group of independent drivers to offer transportation services at fair prices. Thus was born Driver, short for “Independent Drivers”. Tomsky later moved to Silicon Valley, “to attract investment and get a higher market valuation. After we moved, in just a year and a half we raised over $200 million and became a unicorn. It works!” he said clarion. He says that to compete with Uber, “unlike the use of algorithms used by other platforms, our peer to peer (“ person to person ”) model does not involve complex operations; therefore, people can always negotiate directly. Both passengers and drivers have the freedom to negotiate the terms of their interaction, which can be based on price, routes or other factors,” he said. Regarding the high interest rate scenario in the world and the decline in equities of technology companies, Tomsky stresses that we need to be more efficient and points out that “we have raised a new round of investments of 150 million dollars from General Catalyst, which we will allocate to marketing efforts. I’ve been in Argentina since last year.

In the Banco Macro tower, the last work of the great architect César Pelli, a new version of Naves was launched, the training program to support innovative projects which was conceived by the IAE Entrepreneurship Center and which has been providing tools to the entrepreneurial ecosystem for 20 years and which, with the arrival of Macro 9 years ago and especially since the pandemic, it has reached the whole country. Since then, more than 6,500 teams have signed up, made up of more than 11,700 entrepreneurs who have received hours of training, relationship space and mentoring. At the ceremony Silvia Torres Carbonell, soul of Naves, together with Francisco Muro del Macro discussed the details and introduced the economist Diana Mondino who referred to the fact that if there is no innovation, there is no company and encouraged young entrepreneurs to participate in the program.

Women’s networks are considered one of the most effective strategies to achieve the collective empowerment of women. An exploratory survey conducted by RED Di Tella between 2020 and 2022 and in which Lidia Heller participated, among others, observed three types of networks of women in the world of work in Argentina: professionals, in organizations and women entrepreneurs , over a fourth subuniverse. These are the spaces for women in chambers and in business federations. “They all share the common denominator of seeking to expand and solidify strategic ties among women in order to provide them with the personal and professional bonding tools that enable them to successfully overcome and/or reverse the obstacles that threaten their career growth,” Heller said. method of conclusion.