Iplan's new AI company betting on LatAm expansion

Argentine technology and telecommunications company Iplan plans to expand regionally with its new artificial intelligence consulting firm Restart.

"We have a regional project that includes Peru, Colombia and Mexico," Iplan CEO Damian Maldini told BNamericas.

"This expansion aligns with the needs of vendors who require a partner capable of providing certain services in these countries," he said.

The company has technology partners such as Huawei, Microsoft and Google for AI-related matters, among others.

The expansion plan involves launching in either Colombia or Peru in the first quarter of next year, with the other markets to follow in the subsequent quarter. "It depends more on the needs of some clients than on us," Maldini said.

Iplan is currently working on registering the company in these markets.

With Restart, Iplan aims to tap into the AI consulting and implementation market for medium-sized and large companies, with 1,000-2,000 employees, which it considers to be underserved by major tech players at present.

Restart is a spin-off of Iplan, part of a corporate restructuring that now divides the group into three independent units: infrastructure (Iplan Fibra), services (Iplan Empresas and Iplan Hogares) and AI technology consulting (Restart).

The AI company operates three business lines: software resale, professional services and AI consulting and implementation.

It started with a workforce of 30 and is hiring at a rate of three to four new employees per week. "We need to add around 300 people over the next two years," Maldini said.

The location of hired staff will depend on the project and the availability of resources in different markets. "Today, with remote work, we can have specialists distributed across the entire region," he said.

"We don't yet have a clear strategy for which specialization will be based in each country. Currently, all specializations are in Argentina, but as we open operations in other markets, that will change," he added.

Maldini does not rule out the possibility that Restart could also grow inorganically through the acquisition of tech companies.

AI ADOPTION

The executive said that Argentina is significantly behind in terms of technology adoption, after years of economic crisis that limited investment.

"Most companies had to focus for many years on surviving the inflationary process, making it difficult to incorporate new technology. There were years when the economic equation made it unfeasible," he said.

With increased competition, Maldini expects companies to embark on a process of cost optimization and efficiency improvements to export or compete in the domestic market.

"The demand for operational optimization will grow, and this growth, which traditionally was not addressed by AI because it didn’t exist, can now be solved with AI," he said.