Entrepreneurial youths invent Isladentro, the Cuban Yelp

Entrepreneurial youths invent Isladentro, the Cuban Yelp

The new app serves as a guide to businesses and points of interest for
"disconnected" Cubans.
BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES
ngameztorres@elnuevoherald.com

The talents of two young Cuban entrepreneurs came together to create
Isladentro, a cell phone app that mimics Yelp but can be used without an
Internet connection.

Indhira Sotillo, 32, one of the app's founders with Roberto Carlos
Vidal, told el Nuevo Herald during a visit to Miami their goal was "to
invent something that would give us information about where we could go,
places in Cuba we could visit — something like Google Maps and Yelp but
something that could be used without an (internet) connection."

Although the Cuban government has increased access to the internet
through public Wi-Fi points, Cubans still have one of the lowest access
rates in Latin America and slowest internet speeds — problems that led
to the creation of a number of apps that can be used without connections
to the Web.

Isladentro, a play on the Spanish words for "Inside the Island," seeks
to be the largest possible directory of the growing number of private
businesses and other places such as hospitals, banks and museums on the
island, Sotillo said. The business model is based not on the insertion
of advertisements but on monthly payments for listing businesses like
private restaurants, beauty salons and cell phone repair shops.

The operation has 21young employees who work on updating the software
and content and signing up new clients. "The information is gathered by
going from business to business, and we have a service that helps to
design the profile of businesses on the app," she said.

Sotillo added that some state-owned enterprises are paying to be
included on the app, although the majority of her clients are private
businesses. The company currently has more than 600 clients, at a price
of $5 per month. Sotillo, who graduated from accounting and finance,
acknowledged that it's sometimes difficult to sign up owners who
complain the price is too high.

Sotillo said that although it's impossible to know how many people have
downloaded the app — Cuba had more than 3 million cells registered at
the end of 2015 — it's easy to see its potential for expanding the
exposure of the island's small private businesses.

The app is free to the users, who can download it from another cell
phone or in specialized shops through the paquete — a massive collection
of independent news, entertainment, music and other materials sold
widely across the island.

The company has overcome several difficulties. Since the app includes
the database, Sotillo said, "at first it was very large. We have updated
the software and reduced the size" it required from the cell's internal
memory.

It also faces competition from similar apps such as ConoceCuba — Know Cuba.

Isladentro is now trying to expand to all of the island's provinces and
keep up with any changes. Its launch of a digital page for people who
want to visit Cuba, for example, was the result of a survey showing that
70 percent of visitors to the company's web and Facebook pages were
abroad, she added.

With the government's opening more Wi-Fi access points across the
island, the company is also working to make its app accessible from its
web page.

There are not many women among the young Cuban entrepreneurs in the
technology area, and Sotillo was one of the representatives of the
sector invited to a meeting with President Barack Obama when he visited
the island in March.

"To be at that level, with a president, made me very nervous. The nerves
get to you," she recalled with a laugh. More seriously, he said it's too
early to see the results of Obama's decision in 2014 to warm up
relations with Cuba.

"Time passes slowly for those kinds of things," she said.

Source: Entrepreneurial youths invent Isladentro, the Cuban Yelp | In
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