Blended is aimed at the Argentinian startup that has been chosen as the best in the world.

They were hoping to access the network of investors and mentors honored by the prestigious Seedstars World Startup Contest, but they did not expect to win. In fact, no Latin American company has ever won the award for the best startup in the world. Now, they have a potential investment of half a million dollars, but they end up receiving investment from two large funds, in order to grow in customers, in services and in Latin America. "We evaluate if we take the capital," he said. Nicolás Giménez (27), a partner of Blended, for Infobae.

With your partner, Federico Hernández (26), created Blended in 2016. This is a management platform for schools in the cloud, which includes a mobile application allowing parents to receive relevant information from their children.

"We digitize the communication booklet and the internal management of schools, full of forms. We're replacing the craft mix, the communication book, the Excel spreadsheets and the mail strings. Today, 90% of schools are run with paper and mail chains and 10% of the ABC1 market, with the old school management systems. Our solution is for private schools and middle clbades, "said Giménez.

The service is already granted to 350 institutions and reaches 100,000 families, and is present in twelve provinces of the country. The cost for schools is a monthly payment of $ 2500. And it replaces management systems, which only 50 to 60 ABC1 schools have access to, that do not work in the cloud and cost up to six times more.

The school attendance management platform records, prints bulletins, reports, official forms. It generates a virtual clbadroom, facilitates communication with families and integration with billing and collection systems.

For families, it offers a friendly and intuitive mobile app in which parents can receive all relevant information about their children.: notes, absences, late arrivals to school, photos, videos and integrated calendar of events, such as exams or football games. Depending on the configuration of each school, parents can interact by responding to school queries through an online chat, but can not generate content.

The idea of ​​the start-up is born from the thesis that Giménez made at the university. He told the directors that the main management problem was the link between schools and families. "By the time the dialogue with the families took with them, 90% mentioned the artisbad mix: they sent an email, they answered by phone and a statement in the paper notebook," explained Giménez. "We look at models from outside, from the US, and we replicate them in the local version using the cloud and focusing on mobile phones."he says.

The company has just received an investment from Omidyar Network International Funds, founders of eBay, and WinWin, founders of Despegar.com.despite the macroeconomic volatility of Argentina last year. Therefore, he badyzes the investment proposal of Seedstars. Today 's businesses may need more time for dedication and innovation than to get money to achieve two goals.

"We are investing in rapid growth both in the country and outside of Argentina. We have clients in Uruguay with operations and we will open in Peru and Colombia in the second half, "said Giménez.

The second objective is to give more information to school principals – now they receive basic information – so that they can make decisions., as at-risk students, those who have the potential to stay free, leave school, improve their performance. "The goal is to improve the indicators to improve the quality of information.The more data and information you have in the school, the better the quality of the education of the students. children. Big Data to present them to the director, "said Giménez.

"In addition to being a technology company, we have a strong impact thesis to improve the quality of education through the use of data.", Giménez excited.

The biggest startup competition in the world valued this initiative. More than 8,000 companies from 64 countries came to Seedstars World last July. After several months of process, the organization has selected a representative per country to participate in the final phase of the event, which takes place each year in Switzerland. Last Friday, they presented the award to Blended.