Javiera Luongo was selected as YABT’s entrepreneur of the month. Javiera is the co-founder and Sales Director of allGreenUp, the first mobile application in Chile that encourages citizens to adopt environmentally friendly lifestyles through a reward system. With allgreenUp, Javiera participated in TIC Americas 2015 Finals in Panama and won the Eco-Challenge 6.0. Moreover, Javiera will be a panelist in the II High Impact Entrepreneurship Meeting, in Bogota, which is organized by YABT and the Bogota Chamber of Commerce. The event will take place within the framework of the Global Entrepreneurship Week.

In an interview with Javiera, she told us she has always been passionate about entrepreneurship because she comes from a family full of entrepreneurs. She tells us how her family taught her to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit in her daily life from an early age. She says that this positive influence within her family made her cousin Sebastián, her brother Andrés, and her start their own tech business in 2011: allGreenUp. With allGreenUp, Javiera and her team seek to change the relationship between citizens and environment by encouraging them to adopt eco-friendly lifestyles.

AllGreenUp is the first mobile application in Chile that helps citizens measure their actions’ impact on the environment and encourage them to shift towards more eco-friendly lifestyles through reward mechanisms. This app organizes internal campaigns and competitions within communities such as schools, universities and companies. Based on the idea of delivering benefits, allGreenUp fosters a virtuous cycle where everyone wins: the planet, the mobile app users, and the brands linked to the sustainable spirit and small local stores; these stakeholders are the ones that, through a commerce network, offer their products and services with no cost associated with them, looking to position themselves and grow in new markets. AllGreenUp supports businesses and society so they can increase their sustainability indicators and boost labor satisfaction of their employees.

AllGreenUp won the Eco-Challenge 6.0 in the environmental education sub-category within TIC Americas 2015 and was a runner-up for the IDB Demand Solutions Competition. When we asked Javiera about her experience in TIC Americas, she told us that participation in the finals helped her meet and establish a good relationship with potential partners such as the MTV Agents of Change Group. Thanks to this encounter, allGreenUp and MTV partnered to launch an awareness campaign on the Environment Day. Furthermore, she told us that by taking part in the TIC Americas International Expo at the Finals, she was able to interact and pitch her startup to the Chilean Ambassador to Panama. Her successful pitch led allGreenUp to carry out the first international sport event in Panama City, Panama.

Nowadays, more than 47,000 people in Chile are active users allGreenup. This high participation rate has encouraged allGreenUp to start operating in Argentina. By 2016, they expect to expand their business to Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Javiera aims to become market leaders in promoting sustainable development in Latin America and then take the big step to Europe. AllGreenUp has already organized many massive campaigns to encourage youth to adopt eco-friendly lifestyles. In one event, they engaged more than 1,000 college students, where the most eco-friendly app users were able to get tickets for the Lolla Palooza Music Festival, one of the biggest music festival worldwide.

Finally, we asked Javiera to share some advice with young people wanting to start their own business; she told us that allGreenUp’s secret for success was the result of collaborative growth: “If you want your start-up to become successful, doing things by yourself will make things difficult; that’s the reason why I encourage you to ask for support and advice from other entrepreneurs that have gone through similar life experiences”.