Brazil – A Racial Paradise

Is Brazil’s booming economy starting to overheat?

While the world has been transfixed by the astonishing economic growth in China and India, just out of the spotlight Brazil has been busily turning a once moribund economy into a juggernaut.

Not so long ago you could watch the inflation rate tick higher by the hour in Brazil, unemployment grew just as quickly and the nation was in the grip of a military dictatorship. Despite all this, Brazilians have remained optimistic. With momentum building, tens of millions are being winched out of poverty and into relative prosperity, and within a few years it’s estimated the nation’s middle class will number 150 million.”It’s the Brazilian moment! We’ve always said we’re going to be the country of the future…I think we’re there”, says Eduardo Paes, the Mayor of Rio. The economic rise has been fast and frenetic, but the economy is a bullet train and much of the country still runs on the old single gauge; many are worried that it is struggling to keep up with itself. “There are 16 million people still living under the poverty line with less than they need to have a daily meal”, says Father Fernandes. Nevertheless, many Brazilians believe the World Cup and the Olympics will be coming-of-age celebrations.”We always find something to celebrate. That’s why this country is so special: it’s full of passion”. Can they avoid a throbbing hangover?

Theo’s Adventure Capitalists – Brazil

BBC Documentary Series, recorded 22.05.2010

Theo Paphitis travels to Brazil to follow three intrepid British companies trying to succeed in one of the world’s most exciting markets. The Brazilian economy is still expanding, but what can Brits sell them that they haven’t already got?

Theo travels to Brazil’s business hub, Sao Paulo, to Bauru (in the heart of sugar cane country) and to the glamorous Rio De Janeiro to chart the fortunes of three British companies with very different aims and ambitions. There’s Sleek Make Up, an East London company specialising in cosmetics for darker-skinned women. Dreamaid, a website aimed at helping the world’s poorer artists sell their wares to richer customers around the world, and Cadbury trying to enter the Brazilian chocolate market, one of the fastest-growing in the world.

But there are dangers ahead. In the UK, Sleek relies on having its own dedicated stands, where you can try on the make-up yourself. So how are they going to sell make up in a country where the supermarkets just put it in bubble-wrap and sling it on the shelves, so you can’t test it? How does a global giant set about selling its Creme Eggs and Dairy Milk in a country where the taste in chocolate is very different to that of the British? And how can Dreamaid succeed in the hardest task that faces any internet start-up – to get people to visit your site?

The Brazilians are famously laid-back and easy going, but is doing business there going to be easy?

‘To invest or not to invest’ – that’s the question

Looking at 6-Factors i.e. taxes, currency, mortgages, rentability, saleability, legality to make a decision…

Theo’s Adventure Capitalists – Vietnam – BBC Documentary Series

Theo Paphitis follows three companies trying to do business in Vietnam – a communist country that’s embracing capitalism, but on its own terms. With its rapid economic expansion, Vietnam really is an emerging market. The rewards for British companies who get it right here could be huge. But so, too, could the risks.

Theo travels to Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and the World Heritage Site Ha Long Bay to follow the three companies as they try and succeed in this dynamic new market.

Click here to watch the documentary – Market Entry in Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh, real name Nguyen Tat Thanh (1890-1969), Vietnamese Communist leader and the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against French colonial rule. Ho was born on May 19, 1890, in the village of Kimlien, Annam (central Vietnam), the son of an official who had resigned in protest against French domination of his country. Ho attended school in Hue and then briefly taught at a private school in Phan Thiet. In 1911 he was employed as a cook on a French steamship liner and thereafter worked in London and Paris. After World War I, using the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), Ho engaged in radical activities and was in the founding group of the French Communist party. He was summoned to Moscow for training and, in late 1924, he was sent to Canton, China, where he organized a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles. He was forced to leave China when local authorities cracked down on Communist activities, but he returned in 1930 to found the Indochinese Communist party (ICP). He stayed in Hong Kong as representative of the Communist International. In June 1931 Ho was arrested there by British police and remained in prison until his release in 1933. He then made his way back to the Soviet Union, where he reportedly spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. In 1938 he returned to China and served as an adviser with Chinese Communist armed forces. When Japan occupied Vietnam in 1941, he resumed contact with ICP leaders and helped to found a new Communist-dominated independence movement, popularly known as the Vietminh, that fought the Japanese. In August 1945, when Japan surrendered, the Vietminh seized power and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh, now known by his final and best-known pseudonym (which means the “Enlightener”), became president. The French were unwilling to grant independence to their colonial subjects, and in late 1946 war broke out. For eight years Vietminh guerrillas fought French troops in the mountains and rice paddies of Vietnam, finally defeating them in the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Ho, however, was deprived of his victory. Subsequent negotiations at Geneva divided the country, with only the North assigned to the Vietminh. The DRV, with Ho still president, now devoted its efforts to constructing a Communist society in North Vietnam. In the early 1960s, however, conflict resumed in the South, where Communist-led guerrillas mounted an insurgency against the U.S.-supported regime in Saigon. Ho, now in poor health, was reduced to a largely ceremonial role, while policy was shaped by others. On September 3, 1969, he died in Hanoi of heart failure. In his honor, after the Communist conquest of the South in 1975, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Ho Chi Minh was not only the founder of Vietnamese communism, he was the very soul of the revolution and of Vietnam’s struggle for independence. His personal qualities of simplicity, integrity, and determination were widely admired, not only within Vietnam but elsewhere as well.

Vietnam Holocaust

Battlefield Vietnam

“India” — With Cultural ties going back centuries, India & Britain have many things in common. But is doing business one of them? Theo Paphitis travels to India to see if three intrepid British companies can succeed in one of the fastest expanding economies in the world. With cultural ties going back centuries, India and Britain have many things in common. But is doing business one of them? Or are we worlds apart?

Theo travels to Mumbai, with its 14 million population, and central India to see how three very different British companies, with three very different products, try to make their dreams a reality. There’s luxury watch manufacturer Bremont, whose stainless steel watches cost up to six thousand pounds a pop. Regenatec, a company trying to find enough green oil to sell their diesel converter kit in the biggest diesel market in the world. And Marmite, the classic British breakfast spread. Will the Indians love it or hate it?

All three companies have got their work cut out. How will Bremont’s very expensive, highly-engineered but very understated stainless steel watches go down in a country which likes its watches to be made of gold? How will Marmite sell a very British product to a country that’s hardly short of strong flavours of its own? And how easy will Regenatec find it to locate large volumes of ethically produced pure plant oil, so as to take on dirty diesel, in a country whose biofuel industry is still in its infancy?

With its fiendishly complicated import duties, its very different bargaining culture and its sheer size, doing business in India is going to be anything but straightforward for our British companies. What sort of pitfalls will trip them up when they’re trying to do business in a very different culture?

I had no idea there was a BBC show with a similar theme of entrepreneurship in emerging markets – “Theo’s Adventure Capitalists” sounds like a fascinating show that tracks three British companies trying to expand into Brazil, India and Vietnam. I have some serious online viewing to do…

Also, slightly different focus in that Alexandre’s blog spends more time covering the investment side (Private Equity, Venture Capital) of emerging markets, but still a very similar blog nonetheless and worth reading through.

Check it out!

http://emergingcapital.blogspot.com/

Theo’s Adventure Capitalists BBC homepage

All episodes can be found on YouTube (link)