Brazil’s booming economy has helped bring millions of more citizens into the country’s middle class population in the last decade.

Gabriel Elizondo reports from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Published by Al Jazeera English on January 25, 2012.

Brazil has overtaken the UK as the world’s sixth largest economy, according to a London-based research centre.

The shift is part of a larger trend in which emerging economies are out doing some European countries.

The south American country was still considered something of an economic underachiever a decade ago, but as its economy grew steadily in the past eight years, things started to change.

Government’s anti-poverty measures further helped in lifting more than 40 million people into a new middle class.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reports from Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Published by Al Jazeera English on December 26, 2012.

Millions of Brazilians discover the joys of consumer credit. Are they at risk of a bubble? Shasta Darlington reports.

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SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The stylish women with their trim figures walking down Oscar Freire street, popping into Melissa for a pair of shoes or trying on the latest crystal-decorated Havaianas, look so sophisticated that this part of São Paulo could be any upscale city center — give or take the balmy climate and the flourishing green trees.

Compared with the other so-called BRIC countries — Russia, with historic department stores rising from gray streets; India, with its chaotic New Delhi markets; or China, with its sprawling, often empty, shopping malls — São Paulo seems like a hive of glamorous commerce.

Alongside the fashionable shoes and handbags, the companion of any smart woman lunching at the cool and inventive Maní restaurant seems to be not just the latest cellphone but also a shopping bag or two. And these have the labels of well-established homegrown brands, as well as the international names.

How real is this feeling that Brazil has a tide of fashion sweeping over its beach culture? And that this irrepressible enthusiasm for style in Rio de Janiero and São Paulo is only the beginning of a wave of luxury consumerism lapping at the rest of Latin America?

Compared with China, Brazil has had far less attention from the big brands, although their stores are present in São Paulo, lining the streets in the upscale Jardins area. And the clicking of high heels echoes through the Iguatemi mall as shoppers survey the plate-glass emporiums of globally famous brands.

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CAMPINAS, Brazil — When the investment firm Monashees Capital first called Juliano Ipolito, the co-founder of an online handicrafts marketplace, he assumed that he would have to visit the firm in São Paulo.

Brazilian investment firms have traditionally had distant relationships with the companies they finance and are held in low regard by entrepreneurs.

Instead, three Monashees partners, including the co-founders Eric Acher and Fabio Igel, jumped into a car and drove in blistering heat almost 60 miles to Campinas. They spent several hours with Mr. Ipolito and his wife, Monica Ipolito, co-founder of their start-up, Elo7, getting to know them and explaining their role in developing early-stage Internet companies.

Initially, the Ipolitos “did not want to do a deal,” Mr. Igel said, because “they did not need the money and they were happy.”

But the visits to Campinas continued and the relationship grew. Recently, more than seven months after that first call, Elo7 secured Series A financing from Monashees and the American venture capital firm Accel Partners.

The deal illustrates the emergence of an Internet start-up community in Brazil. Home-grown Monashees identified the entrepreneurs, developed the relationship and early on brought in a major Silicon Valley player as a partner to make a rare early-stage investment. That change in the investor-entrepreneur relationship here comes as United States venture capital firms are starting to take notice of Brazil.

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Published: The New York Times online.

Middle class drives Brazil’s economic growth, but global crisis takes its toll. Shasta Darlington reports.

Published: on CNN November 4, 2011.