By Riley Kaminer
Professional racecar driver Tatiana Calderon is used to being one of the only women in competitions. “We compete together, men and women, on equal terms – there is no female league,” she told Refresh Miami.
Calderon has put up with her fair share of adversity since she got behind the wheel at nine years old. “A lot of things need to change in the industry,” she said. “Women need more visibility.”
One way of getting that very visibility is through these sponsorships. Convincing brands to sponsor female athletes, though, often felt like an uphill struggle for Calderon: “It was always a big process of finding sponsors and knowing how to sell yourself.”
It was through this process that Calderon came across Alvaro Melendez. The marketing guru was working at a big agency in Colombia at the time. But immediately, Melendez realized the opportunity to show how investing in female athletes is not just the right thing for brands to do – it can also be majorly profitable.
“We felt that companies were already investing in the sport but not benefitting from brand love because the messages they were putting out were not proud enough – not sufficiently focused on equity in the sport,” said Calderon. “But until you see the data in a graph, they don’t believe it.”
So Melendez began to forge a path to steer companies to see the value of investing in female athletes. And so Miami startup CRANT was born.
“How can we use artificial intelligence and other technologies to help brands be very successful commercially while also growing their diversity, equity, and inclusion?” Melendez said. “We want to help clients understand that they don’t have to be perfect internally to have a positive impact externally. If you’re not actively building a more diverse world, you’re doing the opposite.”
To make this vision come to life, CRANT has developed Ink Lantern, a brand-building platform that enables companies to track their key metrics to quantify their impact. According to Melendez, the platform is mostly self-service. The platform works off a SaaS model, charging anywhere from as little as $200 to as much as $5,000 per month, depending on the needs of the company. CRANT also offers training and consulting services to help their clients – who span healthcare, higher education, sports, tech, and more – to action their insights.
So far, CRANT has been bootstrapped since its launch in 2019. The company has four employees, two of whom are based in Miami. Being based in Miami has been an advantage for CRANT, Melendez explained, as the company has customers across the U.S. and Latin America.
Going forward, what excites Melendez the most is the potential impact CRANT can have. “We’re excited to get more clients to understand the power of their brand as an agent for social transformation.” He also said we can expect to see further research collaborations, such as data-driven white papers that educate brands on the high potential of sponsoring women athletes such as Calderon.
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