Marcelo Bechara

A public accountant from Córdoba, Marcelo Bechara founded a small technology provider for contact centers in 1997 and turned it into Evoltis, a group with more than 2,000 employees that today defines itself as a CX Tech company and serves clients including Arcor, Banco Galicia, Claro, Naranja X, and Ualá. His management style combines two defining features: an internal culture with a strong female presence, including leadership positions, and a sustained commitment to the internationalization of companies based in Argentina’s interior. He chairs the Córdoba Chamber of Foreign Trade and was named Punto a Punto’s Businessman of the Year 2025.

From three separate companies to one group

Evoltis did not begin as a master plan but rather as an orderly accumulation of businesses. TecnoVoz Noroeste was founded in 1997 to provide technology for contact centers in the Córdoba market. Over time, it was joined by Deelo, focused on contact center and BPO services, and Vocus, a software factory that eventually exported products to Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay. The three operated as independent companies until Bechara decided to bring them together under a single structure linking technology, services, software, and infrastructure from Córdoba to the rest of the region.

That structure explains why the company was never simply a call center, even though handling interactions for major companies was part of its early business. The logic of complementary units —each with its own business, all feeding into the same overall proposition— remains part of the company decades later.

A building as a statement of intent

In September 2022, Evoltis inaugurated Evoltis Plaza, its corporate headquarters in Córdoba’s financial district: nine floors, more than 2,500 square meters, and an investment of US$2.5 million. Then-governor Juan Schiaretti and mayor Martín Llaryora attended the opening, a sign of the company’s local importance. At the time, Evoltis employed around 1,800 people.

Bechara described it in almost personal terms: he had always dreamed of a corporate building that could serve both as a symbol and a beacon. The phrase he uses to summarize the company’s essence —create, believe, and grow— was once again at the center of the inauguration, together with Evoltis’s stated purpose of promoting positive interactions between people.

The shift toward AI

In recent years, the company has formalized a repositioning: moving beyond the identity of a contact center provider to define itself as a CX Tech company. Operationally, the strategy is based on combining artificial intelligence with human talent: automating routine interactions so that agents can focus on complex issues and anticipating customer needs rather than merely reacting to them.

That shift was accompanied by an unusual structural decision for a large company based outside Buenos Aires: creating the position of Chief AI Officer and building an artificial intelligence team in Córdoba. Evoltis currently maintains that role as part of its technology structure.

His son Max Bechara, the company’s vice president, has argued that Argentina has the professional talent required to become a protagonist in this field rather than merely a consumer of technology. His involvement also represents the second generation of the family business.

The culture that cannot be copied

One of the features that attracted the most media attention was the composition of Evoltis’s workforce. In 2020, 72% of its employees were women, who also held 59% of leadership positions and 50% of senior management roles. The results reached Great Place to Work’s rankings: Evoltis placed fifth among Argentine companies with more than 1,000 employees in 2019 and sixth among the country’s best workplaces for women the following year.

Bechara’s explanation avoids the language of a corporate brochure. He argues that equality is a matter of human rights and that the process at Evoltis occurred naturally rather than “by decree,” supported by a triangle of dignity, respect, and humility.

He also defends a concept of merit that avoids both extremes of the debate: not transactional merit, but merit that emerges when opportunities are equal and people advance according to their competencies, understood as the combination of knowledge, the ability to apply it, and attitude.

On mandatory quotas for corporate boards, he has drawn a distinction between national and provincial approaches: he sees the former as an imposition and the latter as a choice supported by incentives. His synthesis is simple: decrees do not create cultures.

There is more behind that position than an abstract belief. Bechara insists that any company’s products and services will eventually be copied; its culture will not. That is where he locates the real competitive advantage.

The institutional side

In April 2025, Bechara became president of the Córdoba Chamber of Foreign Trade, succeeding Miguel Zonnaras for the 2025-2027 term. Its board brings together executives from companies including Arcor, Aceitera General Deheza, Manfrey, Helacor, and FCA Automobiles. His inaugural agenda was built around five priorities —competitiveness, internationalization, networking, communication, and community building— under one central premise: competing in the world is not an option but a necessity.

That agenda builds on a long record of institutional involvement. He serves as first vice president of the Argentine Chamber of Contact Centers, chairs Córdoba’s BPO and KPO Cluster, and is a board member of the Córdoba Economic Development Agency.

He also founded Innovis, which promoted Argentina’s Innovation Culture Index, and has maintained an extensive academic career. He taught Customer Value at Universidad Siglo 21 and coordinated programs related to contact center management at the National University of Córdoba’s School of Economics. He remains connected to the university through academic programs focused on innovation culture and management.

The award, and where he received it from

In late November 2025, before an audience of more than 400 people at the Hotel Quinto Centenario, Punto a Punto named Bechara Businessman of the Year. The other finalists were Jaime Garbarsky, founder of Grupo Ecipsa, and Luis Macario, president of the Córdoba Industrial Union. The Lifetime Achievement award went to Horacio Parga of Grupo Edisur.

Bechara was not in the room.

He joined the ceremony from China, where he was taking part in a trade mission alongside 25 Córdoba businesspeople, with an agenda of 28 meetings over two weeks designed to identify opportunities in the Asian market. From there, he highlighted China’s combination of long-term planning and tactical execution, before turning the focus back to his home province: Córdoba, he argued, has the talent and entrepreneurial identity required to project itself internationally.

He dedicated the award to Evoltis’s more than 2,000 employees, his wife, and his son Max, and called for closer coordination between the private sector, government, and academic institutions.

The fact that a businessman received his city’s leading business award while working on the other side of the world captures his argument rather well. The scene said more than the speech.