Two Universidad ORT Uruguay graduates made history when the fintech startup they head was floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Jacobo Singer and Sebastián Kanovich are president and CEO, respectively, of DLocal, a payment platform that handles mass online transactions in some 30 countries in developing markets across Latin American, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Global e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Uber, Sony and GoDaddy rely on the platform accepting hundreds of local payment methods online.
The company is the first Uruguayan firm to reach Nasdaq.
Singer said the DLocal team was a “committed, talented, ambitious, high-quality group with aspirations to make the company the best it can possibly be.”Uruguay’s President Luis Lacalle Pou congratulated the company on Twitter, saying the country was proud of its success.
Fellow graduate Kanovich added that the company employs dozens of Universidad ORT Uruguay students and graduates.
World ORT director general and CEO Dan Green said “our students and graduates are celebrated around the world for having ideas and dreams that they turn into reality, changing the world as they grow in their specialist areas of science, technology and other fields.”
“The leaders of DLocal epitomize our ORT values of innovation, excellence, passion and cooperation—and it is thrilling to see their brainchild helping others in developing nations who are less fortunate,” he continued. “That spirit of tikkun olam (‘healing the world’) is something we encourage everyone across our network to strive for, and in them, we can see the results of that determination.
Kanovich holds an economics degree from Universidad ORT Uruguay, and studied entrepreneurship, innovation and technology management at Tel Aviv University and Stanford University’s business school.
Singer graduated from Universidad ORT Uruguay with a degree in computer engineering.