The 2022 edition of the VC Challenge, Brazil’s largest venture capital and entrepreneurship competition, held by KPTL with Fundo Vale’s support, broke new records in terms of the number of entrants, female representativeness, diversity and geographic reach.

More than 2,600 students from all over Brazil took part in the four-stage competition. Four finalist groups were selected for the last phase, in which they held a pitch in São Paulo. The winning group was then announced.

• University Student Category: 1^st place – group that represented Octa (Thiago Fava and Thomas Sousa)
• High School Category: 1^st place – group that represented Playmove (Leunam Sousa, Pedro Jorge Alves Soares and Rafael de Moraes Freitas)
• Professional / Emerging VC Fellows Category: 1^st place – group that represented waste solution initiative POLEN (Cibelle Higino, CGA and Leonardo Ritschel)

Fundo Vale at the VC Challenge
During the event, Fundo Vale gave a speech in which it shared its vision of major trends in the forest and climate sector and challenges in the area of innovation. It was also present at a virtual booth on the VC Challenge streaming platform.

Fundo Vale participates in and promotes initiatives of this kind in order to strengthen the innovation ecosystem and leverage talent that will work in social and environmental impact investing and businesses in future. One of Fundo Vale’s strategies is to “build capacities” to structure a framework for action that allows us to achieve the results set out in our 2030 Theory of Change.

About the VC Challenge
According to Thomas Moraes of KPTL’s investment team, the success of this fifth edition was only possible due to Fundo Vale’s support. He said, “Fundo Vale materialized KPTL’s desire to bring education to more young people and bring them closer to the innovation and entrepreneurship environment, while considering impacts and sustainability in decision-making processes. Through talks, mentoring and awareness-raising efforts by KPTL, Fundo Vale, the Helda Gerdau Institute, Unimed and Modalmais (in addition to startups), we presented an unknown world to the participants. This was the case with a member of this year’s winning duo, who barely knew what venture capital was before the VC Challenge.”

The VC Challenge is an opportunity for students and market professionals to show their skills and innovative ideas in the world of entrepreneurship and venture capital. It is a forum for participants to understand the perspectives of investors and entrepreneurs through practical experiences, involving a lot of mentoring and feedback from experts.