innovation and local vocation reward entrepreneurs

Agricultural production, cutting-edge industry, commerce, tourism: no Midwest Brazil, activities of all kinds are contributing to sustainable growth. The way to achieve this goal has been to take advantage of local vocations. As a result, of the 44 municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in the region, 43 managed to increase employment in microenterprises in the last decade.

The data are from an exclusive survey of the People’s Gazette based on the Annual Social Information List (Rais), considering formal jobs in micro-enterprises – commercial or service establishments with up to nine employees or industries with up to 19 employees. The good practices implemented in the places that managed to leverage employment are part of the series “Where to undertake has time”which Gazeta do Povo publishes throughout this week.

In general, medium-sized cities, with between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, found it easier to expand vacancies in microenterprises. In larger and more developed cities, mainly in the South and Southeast, the trend was towards a reduction in the number of contracts with microenterprises. But in the Midwest, the expansion took place in a generalized way.

In Primavera do Leste (MT), a municipality that has only been in existence for 37 years, the articulation around agribusiness has made several trade and service activities prosper.

“Agro is the great engine of Mato Grosso, and Primavera do Leste also has this vocation and does it efficiently. Farmers began to organize themselves more into unions and this strengthened the whole city. Now the city is advancing, with the arrival of large industries and investments. For all this, you need specialized labor and support for this production chain. That’s why there’s work for everyone, small, medium and large companies”, reports the president of the Commercial and Business Association of Primavera do Leste (Aciple), Jocelino Godoi.

Despite its agricultural vocation, 64% of the city’s GDP comes from commerce, says Godoi, based on data from the Primavera do Leste Observatory. “We have the advantage of not being so close to the capital, at a good distance, at the same time that we are at a road junction that favors flow and logistics”, he says. An important point in the city’s history, he says, was the diversification of crops in the 1990s, when the drop in the price of soybeans led farmers to grow corn, beans and cotton. “Diversification brought the need for more work and more knowledge, and with that the local economy began to become more solid”, he adds.

Where employment in microenterprises grew the most in the Midwest (cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants; source: Rais/MTE and IBGE) :

Incubator “protects” and gives breath to innovative enterprise

The combination of a city with a large pharmaceutical hub, specialized personnel in the area, scientific knowledge and an incubator resulted in the micro-enterprise Brizze Kombucha, which operates in the probiotic beverage segment and was the first kombucha production company in Goiás to receive registration from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, in June 2021.

The feat was only possible due to the environment that supports entrepreneurship and innovation: to be able to participate in the public notice to promote the incubator at the State University of Goiás (UEG), Brizze needed to develop innovative products based on typical ingredients from the Cerrado.

The micro-industry, which has already won three innovation awards and now has two employees, is located in Anápolis (GO). The city was the sixth that most expanded employment in microenterprises among the 72 Brazilian cities with more than 350,000 inhabitants: the number of employed persons increased by 24%, from 16,230 in 2011 to 20,174 in 2021.

According to businesswoman Ana Paula Montandon, 50 years old, co-founder of Brizze Kombucha, the company’s operation today involves a total of 15 people, including production, commercial, transport and logistics, who work to take the drink to 500 points of sale in Brazil. But before debuting on the market, other people contributed to Brizze becoming a reality: it spent two and a half years in the incubator. “For a whole year we were just planning. We did the financial, marketing, production and product planning. It was really good,” she recalls.

Ana Paula and her husband, Gustavo Siqueira, her partner in the venture, moved from Minas to Anápolis 20 years ago to work in the pharmaceutical sector, an area in which they graduated. Four years ago, Siqueira was willing to change activities and make some investment. Ana Paula, who is also a university professor, had contact with the kombucha drink, which is a fermented tea, and was interested, mainly because of its probiotic properties, which are beneficial to health.

“I told him that I had the courage to participate in a project like this, but that I needed support, as I had never opened a business, I found it very difficult. The opportunity arose when I saw the public notice for the UEG business incubator, but one of the requirements was that companies should work with innovation. Therefore, I presented the drink based on vegetables and fruits from our biome, such as vanilla from the cerrado and passion fruit from the cerrado. So the project was approved,” he says.

Even outside the incubator, the company continues to invest in research and innovation. One of the projects is the analysis of the antioxidant properties of kombucha, which help fight aging.

Other municipalities in Goiás with distinct vocations that recorded strong growth in employment in microenterprises were Senador Canedo and Águas Lindas de Goiás. The first, adjacent to the capital Goiânia, increased from 1,911 formal vacancies in 2011 to 3,618 in 2021, an increase of 89%. In addition to benefiting from the urban conurbation, the municipality has a strong food industry.

In Águas Lindas de Goiás, bordering the Federal District, there is a route of waterfalls and activities related to tourism. The total number of employees in microenterprises rose 77% in ten years, from 1,826 to 3,226.

“When city halls look at the importance of generating jobs and income through small companies, they manage to do great things without depending on a lot of financial resources”, says Elaine Moura, Public Policy analyst at Sebrae Goiás.

According to her, of the 246 municipalities in Goiás, 100 are part of the Cidade Empreendedora project, in which a Sebrae consultant makes regular visits and provides remote support to those interested. “What led us to make this consultant available is the level of interest of the municipalities. It depends on a previous articulation, on a maturation of the projects that will be carried out”, she explains.

One of the requirements to join the project is to open an Entrepreneur’s Room and appoint a Local Development Agent to provide full-time assistance. From this, Sebrae manages to disseminate all the know-how for the entrepreneur, from basic tools to innovation projects and how to benefit from development lines.

Elaine points out that these actions are part of long-term municipal planning. “Development has to do with projects, actions and decisions that do not suffer discontinuity, that are well integrated. The General Law of Micro and Small Enterprises itself is a mechanism that guarantees the permanence of the projects developed by Sebrae. City halls also need to work like this, giving preference, for example, to nominating public officials as Development Agents, rather than commissioners”, she advises.

The Sebrae analyst says that many mayors are still unaware of the potential of micro and small companies. “In Brazil, 98% of formal companies are small businesses and 54% of the payroll comes from small businesses. When I go to city halls, I like to call this data and ask the mayors if they know. When they risk answering, they say much less. So it’s a fact that needs to be massified, so that we can improve even more the support practices for small businessmen”, sustains Elaine.

This is the third report in the series “Where to undertake has time”, which shows the good practices of the municipalities where employment in microenterprises has grown the most in the last decade.