Argentina | IndusLatin

Promoting India Latin America Collaboration

Mercado Libre – Latin America’s E-Commerce Leader

April 5th, 2008 Posted in Latin America

Some stats on LatAm on an article about Mercado Libre (“Free Market” in English) – a company founded in Argentina in 1999. The eBay of Latin America. Argentina has a lot of tech/engineering talent. (Incidentally, Argentina has 3 Nobel Science Prize winners – same as India but with 3.5% of its population)

Not surprising, that Indian companies like Cognizant, ICICI OneSource, CRISIL are setting up operations here. Less employee turnover as well.

via Forbes.com

There is a market of 500 million people--about 8.6% of the world’s population–that the business media all too often neglects as it serves up story after story about China and India. That would be Latin America.
Between 2000 and 2007, the number of Internet users in Latin America grew from 18.1 million to 122.4 million, a compounded annual growth rate of 32% compared with only 12% in North America during the same period. Chile has the highest penetration of 43.2%, with Argentina at 39.7%, Brazil at 22.4%. Average penetration across Latin America is approximately 21.5%, as compared with 71.4% for the U.S.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Argentina, Technology

Champions of the world: Argentina’s sporting miracle

April 5th, 2008 Posted in Argentina, Arts, Culture and Society, Uncategorized

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You have to work hard to see an overweight person on the streets of Buenos Aires. All youngsters look quite athletic.

via The Independent
Sport comes easy to most people here. Without the financial advantages of so many of the world’s leading sporting nations, Argentina is producing an ever-increasing number of champions across a whole range of sports.

Football has long been king in this corner of the planet and the 1978 and 1986 World Cup winners have always exported their greatest talents to the game’s biggest clubs, but Argentines are now taking other stages by storm. The golfer Angel Cabrera won last year’s US Open, Argentines swamp the men’s world tennis rankings, Manu Ginobili is one of the big names of American basketball and even the country’s rugby union players went further than the All Blacks in finishing third in last year’s World Cup. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2% [?]

Argentina, culture

From the land of Maradona

April 5th, 2008 Posted in Argentina

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Visiting Argentina to explore opportunities for Indian business. Walking around in the Palermo neighborhood today, I saw a bunch of kids playing football. Brought back memories of the quarter-final between England and Argentina in the 1986 world cup and the incomparable Diego Armando Maradona “Hand of God” goal. What a game! Here’s a video (ad for Quilmes – Argentina’s “national beer” that captures the passion of football, the state religion of Argentina, a la cricket in India.

watch?v=OZ5fHJ6Y5SA

Popularity: 2% [?]

Argentina, football

Ban on edible oil futures won’t help

April 5th, 2008 Posted in Commodities, India

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Potential to add imports of sunflower oil from Argentina to mix. Banning futures trading is counter-productive and will hurt commodity producers since it doesn’t allow for adequate risk management.

via Business Standard
Of the annual consumption of around 11 million metric tonnes (mmt) of edible oil, India imports around 4 mmt of palm oil and 2 mmt of soyabean oil. The monthly trading of edible oil in 2007-08 in Indian commodity exchanges averaged 2.2 mmt.

Bonus Link: Setting up a commodity futures market is the first attempt to reform agriculture in India

Popularity: 2% [?]

Argentina, edible oil, India, Palm oil

India – Una tierra de magia y asombro

March 20th, 2008 Posted in Arts, Culture and Society, Economics - Indicators, Policy and Trends, India

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A land of magic and wonder. I love the lyrical and poetic description in Spanish that is hard to replicate in English – a style that is almost never used in a mainstream English language newspaper. Grupo Clarin is the biggest Argentine media company.

via Clarin
La India, uno de los países más visitados del mundo, es un destino que refleja como pocos el colorido, contradicciones, belleza y dinamismo de un mundo complejo, donde el pasado coexiste con el presente.

India, one of the most visited countries in the world, a destination reflecting the colors, contradictions, beauty and dynamism of a complex world, where the past coexists with the present.

Un viaje entre el magnetismo y la magia, las tradiciones y la modernidad, la espiritualidad y el choque cultural.

A trip between magnetism and magic, tradition and modernity, spirituality and culture shock.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Argentina, India

Developing Anti-TB drugs from frogs found in Argentina

March 19th, 2008 Posted in Argentina, Health and Pharma, India

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Potential joint research opportunities for Indian organizations

Translated excerpts from LANACION.com

The frogs and toads of our country[Argentina] could be a very important tool in the development of new drugs against TB

Researchers there say that secretions from the skin of amphibians containing compounds capable of fighting pathogens, including the cause of tuberculosis.

“All living organisms are able to produce compounds that are part of their natural defense system,” he told BBC Science Dr. Georgina Tonarelli, a researcher from the Faculty of Chemical and Biological Sciences of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL), Argentina “We are working with compounds frog species characteristics of the provinces of Santa Fe and Entre Rios (in the east),” he adds.

According to the World Health Organization, each year there are at the world around 425,000 new cases of MDR, mostly in the countries of the former Soviet Union, China and India.

“So far we have succeeded in isolating peptides capable of producing four inhibiting the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis,” says Alvaro Siano, fellow of the National Council on Science and Technology (CONACYT), which is also involved in the investigation.

Popularity: 4% [?]