Mario Lopez Estrada

Mario López Estrada is Guatemala's first billionaire and is a telecommunications businessman, studied Engineering in Guatemala's San Carlos University.

Mario López studied Civil Engineering in Guatemala's public university and worked in construction, real state development projects, road construction, urban construction, offices, shopping centers, telecommunications business and renowable energy projects.

As he says himself in interviews with communication media, his professional life started working as a public employee in Municipalidad de Guatemala (Guatemala City Hall) and Central Government.

Afterwards, he became an entrepreneur in construction business achieving his first project through a long term mortgage. He was later dedicated to the construction of roads across Guatemala. Due to tough competitors, he decided to explore new horizons. This is how the construction business began, developing housing projects.

In 1972, the businessman Mario Lopez Estrada founded Constructora Maya, an independent construction company.

According to a financial report in Bloombergs website, from 1986 to 1991 he worked as Ministro de Comunicaciones, Infraestructura y Vivienda (Minister for Communications, Infraestructure and Housing) during the first democratic government in Guatemala, with expresident Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo. Mario Lopez Estrada ventured the aggresive telecommunications business in 1993. Since that time he has made Tigo Guatemala the number 1 teleccommunications company in the country.

In the 1980s, he served as the head of the state telecommunications company. López was Minister of Communications in the government of Vinicio Cerezo, who served as President of Guatemala from 1986-91.

He is the president of Tigo Guatemala, that country's largest mobile phone service provider with more than eight million users and market share of over 54%. In early 2013, Tigo promoted adoption of smartphones by its users; it started by selling 30,000 smartphones per month, then in late 2013 100,000 per month, and in late 2014 sold 150,000 per month.

In 2015, he became a billionaire, according to Forbes.

In the nineties, he started the telecommunications business in Guatemala. Back then, the business was very new. And as the global business was growing, so was Guatemala's, which allowed commercial advantage before its competitors started subsidiaries in the country. This advantage can be seen in:

He was considered the first central american multimillionaire to enter the famous Forbes list of richest men in the planet.

Mario Lopez Estrada is the founder and President of the Board of Directors of Tigo Foundation. According to its website, Tigo Foundation is dedicated to support children in Guatemala with healthcare, education and sports. Their website also cites that from its foundation in 2009 to 2017, 250 schools have been built in the rural areas in Guatemala.

In their social media accounts, Tigo Foundation supports the achieving of Millenia Development Objectives, set by United Nations and actively contribuites with human and country development, through innovative programs built around four key stone foundation points: Education, Healthcare, Transparency and Special Projects.

Unete's Facebook campaign in the fight against cancer, it is known that Tigo Foundation is sponsor of their annual campaign to raise funds for the support of cancer treatment for children alongside UNOP (National Hospital of Pediatric Oncology).

Tigo Foundation published in their Facebook Page that they have signed recently a cooperation agreement with Japan's Embassy in Guatemala that will benefit more than 160 boys and girls. The construction of the school will include 6 classrooms, 1 Digital Classroom, 2 bathroom modules, 1 kitchen, 1 principal's office, 119mts2 of perimeter wall, 1 school orchard, and teachers will be trained in technology studies and 11 water filters will be given.

They also published in December 2015 that the American Embassador, Todd Robinson invited private sector members, among them representatives of Tigo Foundation to visit different USAID projects being held in Quiche. From this visit, Tigo Foundation started an iniciative called CEPROCAL (Caprine Production of the Highlands) in Nebaj and its part of the PAISANO project with Save the Children Guatemala.

Their objective for continuing the support to communities, their development and improving the quality of life index is algo known through their publications. Tigo Foundation provided 2 refrigerated system trucks to the United States of America Embassador for the use of CEPROCAL in Quiche. Said vehicles will be used for the collection and distribution of goats' milk in the neighbouring communities towards downtown, as part of USAID programs and the PAISANO project from Save The Children Guatemala. This donation seeks to aid chronic malnourishing in Quiche, where more than 72.2% of 2 year old children suffer this illness.

In May 2017, Lopez Estrada received the Excellence in Business Recognition from Forbes in Genius Disruption forum in Guatemala city, as told in different media publications.

During the event this is what was said about the enterprise work: Grupo Onix invested more than 6 million dollars in the development of Plaza Madero shopping center, becoming the third shopping center project, with two others developing currently. In Paraguay, he opened Paseo la Galeria, the biggest project outside of Guatemala with an investment of 220 million dollars.