In 2017, over 1.6 million people in the region were working directly or indirectly in jobs relating to mobile telephony. The figure is from a report published by GSMA, an organization representing mobile operators and companies involved with these systems, “The Mobile Economy: Latin America and the Caribbean 2018”. One of these people is the Peruvian, Roling Auccalla, who repairs and sells accessories for mobiles. He has two premises in Lima, where three of his six siblings work too.
Roling Auccalla repairs a mobile phone in his shop
After completing his education in IT at the age of 25, he knew he wanted to run his own business. He left his place of birth, Chanchamayo, and moved to the capital. “I wanted to be independent; I didn’t want to work for a company, because sometimes you don’t earn enough for a living: I wanted to be an entrepreneur”, says Roling. So he opened a mobile phone repair shop in the Virgen de la Candelaria market in Lurín. In that small locale, without a lot of equipment or tools, Roling began to build his future, using much talent and hard work.
Milagros Díaz, a microcredit officer in Lurín for Financiera Confianza, BBVA Microfinance Foundation’s institution in Peru, visited his stand to watch him work and find out about his aspirations and dreams for the future. She offered him his first loan, and since 2016 Roling has been a client of Confianza, which has enabled him to upgrade his business.
Milagros points out that “other financial institutions and banks didn’t want to grant him a loan because he lacked credit history. In Financiera Confianza, we backed him up, and that is how he started on his journey as an entrepreneur”. Roling confirms this: “I’ve always wanted to have my own business. Confianza believed in me”.
Roling Auccalla with Milagros Díaz, a microcredit officer from Financiera Confianza
He used the first loan to invest in spare parts, machines and tools for repair service, and a second one to open another shop which sells mobile phone accessories. He still wants to expand more. “The idea is to support my siblings and then for each of them to become independent, since they’re all doing very well in their studies”, he explains proudly.
He has a brother who works directly with him and who has already finished university, while the others are studying Systems Engineering, Computer & IT studies and Electronics. All of them, thanks to Roling’s support, want to follow the road taken by their eldes brother and start their own businesses.
