Since World War II, Brazil has had significant economic and cultural interactions with the U.S. The cultural affinity and language skills of Brazil-based employees facilitate smoother and more-effective interactions, which also reduce costs by decreasing the time and effort afforded to interactions. Moreover, Spain and Portugal are continuously increasing their investments in Brazil and these connections, from a business as well as from a language and a cultural perspective, also entice customers to those locations. Capturing the same advantages, Curitiba has emerged as the business capital of Brazil.
Alsbridge’s 2007 study identified Curitiba as one of the emerging offshore locations and the factor that works most in its favor is the availability of low-cost labor. Also the 2007 report Top 50 Emerging Outsourcing Cities, released by Global Services and Tholons, has Curitiba’s name in this list.
Being Brazil’s best city for conducting business operations, companies such as Exxon Mobil, HSBC — Global Technology Center, Accenture, Wipro and Atos Origin have development centers established in Curitiba. Despite so many factors in its favor, Curitiba is still struggling to develop reliable supply of an English-speaking workforce to fuel the industry demands. To counter this drawback, initiatives are taken by the local authorities and universities to supply the right resources for the right job. The Federal University, Catholic University, The Federal Technical University, Unicenter and OPET are some institutions that work toward preparing the talent that would be aligned with the customers’ and market’s demands.
| Five things to do |
1. Federal University of Paraná
Universidade Federal do Paraná is the oldest Brazilian University that was established in 1912. It offers 60 options of graduation courses, 124 “lacto sensus” degrees, 41 master degrees and 26 doctoral programs. Every year more than 30,000 students pass out from the University. |
2. Wire Opera House
Built on a former rock quarry, the opera house is located in the middle of an urban green park, Parque das Pedreiras. The house gets its name from the steel tubes used to construct it, and can seat 10,000 people or accommodate upto 50,000 standing. |
3. 24 Horas Street
As the name suggests, this is a 24 hours street that never sleeps and is the synthesis of a city which also never sleeps. Composed of 32 arches in metallic tubular structure, this street measures 120 meters in length and 12 meters in width, thus becoming the trademark of the modern Curitibana architecture. |
4. Botanic Gardens
These gardens are Curitiba’s trademark and attract researchers from all over the world. They were created to resemble French gardens. The greenhouse, with a metallic structure, has botanic species that are of national reference along with a water fountain. The native forest is filled with paths for walking. There is a space for exhibitions, library and a theatre. |
5. Tanguá Park
Tanguá Park is a part of the Barigüi river preservation project joining Tingüi and Barigüi parks and re-utilizes an old complex of deactivated quarries. The park stretches on an area of 450 thousand square meters, and has two quarries connected by a 45-meter tunnel that may be crossed by foot via a path over the water. It can be visited by boat or on foot (hiking). |
Curitiba Development Agency along with the local municipal authorities has recently established the Curitiba Technopark — a technology park that concentrates public and private technological assets — interconnecting universities, R&D institutions, the private enterprise and the public sector. All in all, an environment comprising 40,000 university students, 500 research groups and 3,000 professors. As an incentive to boost exports from the Technopark, offshore services rendered from the zone enjoy a tax holiday. Also, the ISS (tax on services) is lowered from 5 to 2 percent and depending on the company location, tax incentives can be extended to a 10-year exemption of the land property tax and other municipal taxes.
Thus, Curitiba is now emerging well connected to the world. Intense immigration from different countries (most notably from Italy, Germany, Japan, the Middle East and other Latin America countries) has resulted in cultural diversity and the availability of different language skills. The delivery of services often involves significant interaction with end users for activities such as gathering business requirements, analyzing processes and managing projects, and such an interaction requires clear and concise language skills. Cultural affinity has directly affected the success of these important interactions in Curitiba.
Q&A
Fernando Estrázulas
Country Manager, Wipro Technologies, Brazil
With plans to expand and initiate BPO operations in the Curitiba facility, Wipro is enjoying the benefits offered by this Brazilian city. Fernando Estrázulas, Country Manager, Wipro Technologies, Brazil, tells Namita Goel the challenges and opportunities offered by the city
What is the current strength of your Curitiba center?
Right now, we have a little more than 100 employees in the Curitiba facility. And, we are planning to expand further.
What are the services offered from this center?
We are mostly offering Enterprise Application Services (Oracle, JD Edwards, AD&M/AMS) from this center. The plan to launch BPO services is in the pipeline.
What are the benefits that Curitiba offers you?
Being the business capital of Brazil, Curitiba offers a lot of advantages, which are:
- Good local infrastructure
- Proximity to customers
- Curitiba has a very interesting program to encourage IT companies to install their development center there. It is called Curitiba Tecnoparque (technopark), and this program offers support to the deve-
lopment of technological businesses (i.e. software development) in a specific area in the city
- Lot of good universities.
What are the challenges you face in Curitiba?
Brazil, in general, faces the challenge of skilled English speaking workforce. So Curitiba is no exception to this.
The other challenge that the region experiences would be in terms of resource availability. Although Brazil has good universities from where more than 20,000 engineers graduate every year, the current demand for technical professionals has grown faster than the training capabilities. This is the result of the tremendous economic growth in the country. Moreover, there is a time gap between the training offered to people and the trained people who are ready equipped to work.
