Simón Puebla grew up in Madrid, studied in London and finished his degree in Beijing. But he always knew that he wanted to return. Today, from Mendoza, he leads Andén, the startup that is building the first digital economic zone in Latin America with a simple conviction: Argentine talent should not have to leave to succeed.
Along the way his training ranged from crypto funds to an art gallery in Mendoza. However, it was upon returning to Argentina, working for two years on the development of the local technological ecosystem, where he found the problem he wanted to solve; The Argentine founders had enormous talent, but they ended up incorporating their companies in Delaware, Dubai or Singapore due to lack of a competitive jurisdiction. The answer was not to create something new, but to activate what already existed.
What is Andén and how does it work?
Andén was born from that certainty. Together with Milagros Santamaría, Santiago Bermúdez and Teófilo Beato, Simón developed a layer of technology that is applied to existing free zones to convert them into digital economic zones. Generating ten-year fiscal stability, operations in dollars and automation of tax compliance, all within Argentina.
The proposal takes advantage of laws already in force (such as free zones and the knowledge economy) so that the benefits originally designed for the import and export of physical products also work for digital service companies.
The road to Mendoza and institutional support
The chosen province was Mendoza, the place that Simón left when he was six years old and to which today he wants to return everything he learned abroad. The team presented a study to the provincial government that compared Mendoza with the main technological hubs in the world. And the province could position itself as a reference without political cost, without changing any law, only enabling access to benefits that already existed.
The government of Mendoza became the institutional partner of the project, betting on positioning itself as a global technological hub. Added to this is the boost from Vaca Muerta as a trigger for investment in the region and the arrival of funds such as that of Martín Varsavsky. Today, Andén is also helping Argentine companies access the benefits of NVIDIA, who has also believed in the project.
What’s coming for Andén
The immediate focus is to consolidate Mendoza as a success story. Once the model has been demonstrated, the roadmap aims to export the technology to other free zones in the region. The startup has already had conversations with Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and Panama, in a potential market of more than 600 free zones throughout Latin America.
