Roxana Pomier F. / La Paz
The entrepreneurial essence is in its DNA. From his teens he earned his own money. He always knew what he wanted. For this reason, with his economist degree – granted by Bentley University (Massachusetts, USA) – Marcelo Claure Bedoya undertook. At 26 he already owned Brightstar and years later he became a dream booster.
For almost four years, the Bolivian businessman has been CEO of the Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Group International. As of 2019, he leads the SoftBank Innovation Fund for Latin America of 5,000 million dollars. It is the largest investment fund for Latin American entrepreneurs in technology. “Currently we invest about 1,000 million dollars a week and 100 million dollars correspond to Latin America,” explained Claure to Página Siete.
As he folded his hands, it seemed he was searching his mind. “It pains me to see that SoftBank has invested 3,000 million dollars in Latin America in the last two years, but that no company is Bolivian,” he lamented. The 50-year-old from La Paz expressed his intention to meet with President Luis Arce to “have an open conversation to explain to him what my business intentions are in the country.”
Claure was in La Paz last week to show the progress of the Bolívar Club Centennial Plan. During his stay he tried, unsuccessfully, to talk with the president of the State. “I wanted to meet with the President to express my intention to invest in Bolivia and make sure that he agrees with what I am doing,” he insisted.
“Obviously, this is independent of my investment in football. Soccer is my passion and what I invest is to give back to my country what it gave me so much ”, he clarified. Investments in Latin American startups by Softbank are in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico. “Today I am fortunate to work at SoftBank, the largest investor in the world, where we support entrepreneurs who are changing traditional business models through technology,” he explained.
He identified that “in Bolivia, like Latin America, there is great potential. The truth is, I want to invest in Bolivia and my team has already visited the country on more than one occasion. I would love to see Bolivian entrepreneurs succeeding abroad. Of course, I want to make sure that the President agrees and goes hand in hand with a public vision and strategy. I will try to find some way to meet with him and have an open conversation to explain to him what my business intentions are in the country ”.
Forbes magazine says he is the richest man in Bolivia with a net worth of $ 900 million. In 1994, at age 23, he graduated as an economist in the US and on the return trip to Bolivia he met Guido Loayza, president of the Bolivian Football Federation, “my mentor”, he says.
With him he formed a work team in a Green that played the World Cup in the USA. In 1997 he founded Brightstar, and his business success led him to lead Sprint and today to be part of Softbank.
- Softbank The company was founded in 1981 by Masayoshi Son. It operates in fixed line telecommunications, e-commerce, internet, technology services, finance, media and marketing and other areas.
- Forbes SoftBank was ranked on the Forbes Global 2000 list as the thirty-sixth largest public firm in the world and the second largest publicly traded company in Japan after Toyota.
- Claure In 2019, SoftBank launched an investment fund focused on Latin America led by COO Marcelo Claure.
