Comparabien allows customers in emerging markets to compare money, insurance and telecoms. Co-founder and Cass Business School alumnus Leo Castellanos talks us through its founding.
Leo Castellanos saw so much promise in entrepreneurship and emerging markets that he was prepared to leave a consulting career behind. After working at PwC and EY, he started an EMBA at Cass Business School, where he met his co-founder, Alfredo Ramirez.They launched a pilot in Peru, but since the company really started going in 2010, Comparabien has expanded across five Latin American countries. Today Comparabien operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile and México.
Leo talks us through how the business was founded, what challenges they have faced, and why emerging economies are a good place for MBAs to launch a start-up.
What is the company's size?
We’ve got a team of ten now.
Which sector does it operate in?
Currently our products are oriented towards various sectors of the financial market; however our services will expand in the future to offer comparisons to other fields such as telecommunications, energy, consumer products.
What does the business do and what are your core/flagship products?
The company was formed with the aim of providing unbiased and reliable information on market offerings. Our products’ comparisons are applications free to use, to allow our users to compare different offers of products and services in an easy and intuitive way, also providing useful information to consumers.
We compare three verticals; money; insurance, and telecoms.
Who is the CEO/ founder?
I co-founded the company with Alfredo, who was in the same cohort as me on the EMBA program at Cass. He is the CEO and I have mostly handled securing finance and expansion into other countries.
How was the company founded?
We were talking about the possibly of taking some proven business models here in the UK to Latin America and we concentrated on online comparison websites. In the UK they didn’t exist 15 years ago, but now they are a proven way to create value.
But now they are a vibrant and proven way to create value, similar to the concept of Moneysupermarket or Go Compare - something that people can relate to easily.
The first thing Alfredo did when he went back to Peru after graduating was put together a pilot. We bootstrapped and I worked on nights and weekends, and finally we launched in 2010.
What potential did you see in emerging markets?
Being Latin American, we thought it was about time someone took this concept to our countries. We didn’t really know it would take off, so the acceptance and feedback from people has been brilliant.
The region has been growing somewhere between 8-10 per cent in the last 10 years. In Brazil, millions of people have entered into the middle classes. These are people who for the first time are buying a house or a car, are insuring it, and who have access to credit cards.
And we realized if this idea will take off somewhere, it should be in Latin America.
How have you handled expansion into five different countries?
Complying with the framework is very different in each company. But while it’s a huge challenge, once it is overcome it becomes a competitive advantage. The other challenge is educating people that don’t really believe that our business will create value for them.
In the UK it’s been happening for years, but in Peru, to convince a bank you will decrease their costs… it takes a little bit of time.
What is the future of the business?
Now we’re looking for growth. I’m lucky enough to have a co-founder who went full-time on the business about a year ago. My main role has been raising investment and dealing with expansion but he manages day to day operations.
We’ve had this entrepreneurial dream for some time and it’s truly exciting to do something for us, that is ours not someone else’s. This industry is a game that is only won through advertising. Medium to long term our strategy will go hand in hand with advertising.
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