Following the widespread of internet in Cuba, several online start-ups are emerging. A 33-year-old software engineer from Cuba, Mr. Bernardo Gonzalez, explained that the development launched his new business, which is a website where people can order island-made products such as soap, bouquets of flowers and cakes for home delivery.
“It’s like Amazon for Cuba, but with a difference,” he told an audience of New York techies at a conference this month. Mr Gonzalez is counting on buyers from the Cuban diaspora, which already plays a role in the economy, sending money and other products to the island.
But CNN observed that the infrastructure doesn’t exist for domestic buyers to sustain the market as the Internet access among Cuba’s 11.2 million people is just growing. Between 2013 and 2015, the share of the Cuban population using the internet jumped from about a quarter to more than 35 per cent, according to estimates from the International Telecommunications Union.
The growing market has helped draw the attention of internet giants, such as Airbnb, Netflix and Google, which installed servers on the island and started hosting data there last month. The rise is also fuelling activity among local entrepreneurs, who are launching domestic versions of sites such as the crowd-review business directory Yelp.
Less than 6 per cent of Cuban households had internet access at home in 2015, one of the lowest rates in the western hemisphere, according to the ITU. (In the UK, that figure tops 91 per cent.) Wi-fi hotspots in parks and other public places operated by the staterun telecom company remain the primary way to log on.
Service at the hotspots is often slow, expensive and selective, with the government restricting access to the full range of internet sites.
The constraints are shaping the emerging Cuban start-ups. At this month’s TechCrunch conference in New York, United States, Gonzalez shared a stage with Kewelta, a firm focusing on advertiing within decentralised online and offline networks, and Knales, which provides updates on weather, news and other events via text messages and phone calls.
