The Pitch Competition, open to high-growth women entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean, is organized by IDB Lab and Angel Ventures. The deadline for application is July 31. The winner will participate in a one-week immersion program at Microsoft offices in San Francisco.   

The  IDB Lab , a member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group, announces the seventh edition of WeXchange, the leading forum for connecting and strengthening women entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean.   

WeXchange will be held on November 13 and 14 in Asuncion, Paraguay, at the Paseo La Galeria event center. The local partner for the WeXchange 2019 edition is KOGA. During the event, participants will have networking opportunities, participation in mentoring sessions and trainings, and access to potential investors. 

In its seventh edition, the theme of the forum will be "Women STEMpreneurs creating global businesses", inviting women entrepreneurs who seek to solve problems using their knowledge of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM, for its acronym in English). 

This edition will count once again with the Pitch Competition, which will award a prize to the most innovative and dynamic STEM-focused entrepreneur in the region. The objective is to identify and recognize businesses with a strong technological and innovation component, which have at least one woman in the founding team and is targeted to Latin America and the Caribbean. Six finalists will be selected, who will make their pitch to a panel of independent experts during the WeXchange forum in Asuncion, Paraguay.  The Pitch Competition is organized by the venture capital fund Angel Ventures and powered by Microsoft for Startups. The winner and the finalists will receive important prizes for their participation in the Pitch Competition, including Azure credits and mentoring by Microsoft experts. Additionally, the winner will participate in a one-week immersion program at Microsoft offices in San Francisco, where she will be introduced to potential investors and collaborators.

Women entrepreneurs can submit their applications using this link until July 31.   

There will be launch events for the Pitch Competition in several cities, including Buenos Aires, Bogota, Lima, Mexico City, and San Jose. For information about the events and registration follow WeXchange social media accounts Fb:@WexchangeCommunity and Tw: @WeXchange. 

The winner of the 2018 Pitch Competition was the Mexican Laura Mendoza, co-founder of Unima, a biotech startup that has developed an efficient. Low-cost disease surveillance technology. This device enables health workers to diagnose diseases directly at the point of care. Unima's goal is to provide access to an early diagnose to three thousand million people living in vulnerable conditions.