17 May IE MBA Students action plan for Start Ups and Social Enterprises

Written by Vera Awachie, Fellow at Social Innovation Center@IE.

Millas para el Retiro is a social enterprise focused on providing people with access to a formal pension for retirement, and one of IE’s many impact projects. Jorge Lopez and Sebastian Fernandez spoke more about the purpose of Millas para el Retiro and how IE MBA candidates are helping companies such as these meet their business goals.

 Millas para el Retiro was launched in Mexico with the aim to make retirement and financial stability accessible to all. According to Lopez, one of the great problems in this world is not lack of financial resources but rather lack of access to these resources. Unfortunately, this problem is coupled by the distrust towards financial institutions and general financial illiteracy.  To address this problem head on, their company aims to also uncomplicate financial knowledge and make the ability to have a livable pension available to all.

With these aims in mind, Millas para el Retiro is now hoping to expand into other countries such as the Dominican Republic and Colombia and hopes to employ the expertise of IE MBA candidates in their expansion strategy into these two different markets.

According to Fernandez, one of the great benefits of having IE MBA candidates work with them is the diversity of experience, specialization and background that they bring.  This combined and varied experience of the IE MBA candidates is applied during their consulting project with the company. According to Lopez, Millas para el Retiro is a start up and thus the projects which the IE consultants work on is treated very seriously and expectations are high. “Some other students may expect something similar to a mentorship. However, this is not a school project we are a startup and expect an action plan that will be implemented by us.”