José Carlos Semenzato
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José Carlos Semenzato (b. 23 March 1968) is a Brazilian businessman and entrepreneur, founder and president of Microlins educational franchising chain. The holding presided by Semenzato has a number of other affiliated companies: Editora Raízes (a publishing house), a printshop, Star Brindes (a gift manufacturing company) and ProfSat (a satellite-based distance education and corporate communication company, in society with the Universidade de Uberaba). The conglomerate, which has been restructured as a holding named FranHolding has other franchising chains, such as the Instituto Embelleze, in the area of professional education in cosmetics, NumberOne Idiomas, in the area of idioms teaching, and Ricardo Almeida, a clothing fashion school.
Semenzato was born in Cafelândia, in the hinterland of the state of São Paulo to a family descendant from agrarian Italian immigrants. He started to work very young. At the age of 23, in 1991, he founded a small computing school in the city of Lins. Brazil was then living through a boom in the number of microcomputers sold to the population and there was a huge demand for training and education. He obtained success and expanded to several other cities. A few years later he moved the company to a larger city, São José do Rio Preto. In 1996 he turned his business model into a franchising chain and in 1998 added a number of other middle-level professional courses to his product line.
Presently Microlins is the fifth largest educational franchises in Brazil, with more than 690 schools in more than 500 cities, and with ca. 500,000 students (data of June 2007). The Instituto Embelleze chain has presently more than 100 franchisees.
Semenzato is married to Ms. Samara Semenzato, his partner and collaborator in the company, and has a son and a daughter.
