Diego Barreto, vice-president of finance and strategy at iFood, participates in a debate on the role of education, investments and companies in the technological revolution
How to enable a digital transformation in a country as large, diverse and unequal as Brazil? This challenge was at the center of the debate promoted in the panel “Instigating Brazil’s Technological Revolution”, from Brazil Conference, an event held online between April 11th and 17th.
Diego Barreto, vice-president of finance and strategy at iFood, participated in the panel and debated the topic with Julio Vasconcellos (Atlântico VC), Sabine Righetti (Agência Bori), Camila Farani (G2 Capital) and Rodrigo Barcia (Neoway).
For them, accelerating digitalization depends on three pillars: human capital, financial capital and public policies. Check out the main points discussed in this debate below, which can be Watched in full on YouTube (the panel starts at 8:45 am).
Human capital: companies invest in education
For Diego Barreto, technology is a crucial factor in moving the economy forward and reducing social inequality. “The beauty of technology is that it is allowing, for the first time, accelerate your career or give opportunities to talents, because teaching technology does not require typical traditional training,” he said during the event.
Technology companies, points out Barreto, can contribute to this career acceleration by offering education and training programs — such as Tech Power, carried out in partnership with schools focused on teaching technology. “This will not change Brazil overnight, but it is a window of opportunity never seen before from this perspective,” he said.
Furthermore, Barreto believes that companies and universities must learn to work together to find a way to achieve the same goals. He cited iFood's commitment to encouraging the production of scientific knowledge, such as the partnerships signed with State University of Campinas (Unicamp), the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and the Federal University of Goiás.
But he criticized the lack of public policies and dialogue between companies and universities. “Just as we demand that the government be more of a State, companies need to be less 'short-termists'”, he assessed.
Greater access to financial capital
As for financial capital, participants said that access to these resources in the area of technology is currently better than in the “early days” of digital transformation in the country. So much so that Brazil is among the 10 countries with the most unicorns in the world (iFood was once a unicorn startup before becoming a foodtech).
“We are living a magical journey. 15 years ago, how many foreign or Brazilian funds were investing in Brazil? How many incubators or accelerators were there? Who spoke the word 'angel'? How many people were encouraged to work at a startup? The answer is: zero”, said the iFood executive.
But there are still problems that cannot be swept under the carpet, including the low female presence among investors and the creation of initiatives to promote and access capital so that ideas that emerge outside the South-Southeast axis can participate in this pie.
Technology to boost small businesses
A technological revolution, according to the panelists, cannot be carried out solely and exclusively by the major players in the market. For Barreto, the moment is positive for owners of small and medium-sized businesses who want to rely on technology to grow.
“We moved technology from hardware to software,” said the executive, who sees this transition as a gateway for more people to compete in this market. “This explains why Brazil has a boom in startups and entrepreneurship. Because people who have historically been cut off from the option of being able to undertake are now accessing these tools and using them to at least try.”
For all this change to happen, Barreto concluded his participation by saying that the country needs representatives in politics who are committed to accelerating the advancement of the digital revolution. “We need leadership in this that effectively makes us believe that it is possible to change Brazil through technology and eliminate the century of delay that we have in different aspects.”
