Venture up a quiet side street off the heaving Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro and brave the narrow, cobbled inclines to the Chapéu Mangueira slum, and you'll find one of the city's best restaurants, Bar Do David. Outside, a few plastic chairs bask in the sun; inside, the back wall has been transformed into an intricate re-creation of Rio's favelas, or slums.There are tiny street signs and churches, thimble-sized working cable cars and numerous little dwellings painted with bold lettering, proclaiming "Welcome!", "Bienvenue" and "Namaste". There's even a mini "Bar Do David", where owner and chef David Bispo beams with pride. "When we moved here, nothing existed. My father fought for this land," he said.Bispo's home - and thriving business - sits at the mouth of one of Rio's 300 favelas, poor hillside neighbourhoods known mostly for their violence, drug trafficking and gun crimes.But if you're fortunate enough to experience the hospitality of a local, favelas are vibrant communities housing close to 1.5million people - a quarter of Rio's population.story_article_left1Favelas are also entrepreneurial hot spots with a jumble of small businesses - from flip-flop sellers to photo studios and electronics vendors hawking knock-off big-name headphones and cheap charging cables."The products here are high-quality but much cheaper than down in the city, so even locals are starting to come here to buy goods and services," said resident Cristiano Bento, 35, who started dealing drugs in Chapéu Mangueira when he was 17. Now he works for AfroReggae, a nonprofit group that tries to steer drug-dealing youngsters to an alternative career path.Bento is right: Brazilian entrepreneurship, in the favelas and beyond, is booming.Last year, one in five Brazilians were involved in starting or running a young business. In 2010, a new small and medium enterprise programme by the city's government led to more than 1700 newly legalised companies being formed in Rio's pacified favelas alone.By last year, the number of small businesses in Rio had more than doubled to onemillion, according to Sebrae, a Brazilian nonprofit organisation specialising in SMEs. Their economic influence is hefty: the country's 12.3 million favela residents generate $20-billion (about R287-billion) a year through commerce - equivalent to the GDP of Iceland - according to research from consulting firm Data Popular.Until 2011, Brazil was the golden child of the emerging markets bloc, when its economy grew by 4.5% a year for almost a decade.But along recession, brought on by plunging oil prices and embittered political dramas, has caused the economy to slump to its deepest point in 100 years - the first of several calamitous events to have befallen Brazil lately: they run the gamut from a massive corruption scandal involving the government and state oil giant Petrobras, the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff and a public health crisis due to the Zika virus epidemic, all resulting in complete paralysis of economic growth.Soon, 500,000 tourists and 10,000 athletes will descend on the coastal city for the 2016 Olympic Games. The event has been plagued by controversy, including worries of a transport and accommodation crisis spurred by unfinished construction of the citywide Metro and several new hotels.story_article_right2The doleful national mood is reflected in the conspicuous absence of Olympic billboards, banners and signage. But the city hopes tourists will bring a much-needed boost to individuals and small business owners trying to supercharge growth.Maristela Simões, who runs an artisan soap business called Bath and Home, is one of several awardees of a special contract under a R$3-billion Olympic Committee scheme for small enterprises to supply local goods and services for the Games.During the Soccer World Cup in 2014, Simões won a similar contract to sell 500 sets of soaps in Brazil's colours to Club Med, which she said had increased business by 30%.Airbnb has seen a huge uptick in Rio listings for the two-week Olympics period. "We are reaching a 12% unemployment rate in Brazil, a lot of people have lost jobs and their income, so Airbnb has become a source of additional or even sole income for families," said Leo Tristão, Airbnb's country manager.The start-up, which is an official partner for Rio 2016, has 35,000 listings in the city and has already received 50,000 bookings. On average, hosts will make roughly $1,200 a week. "We have seen particular growth of listings in favelas, where revenues have been very important in helping the communities renovate their houses," said Tristão.Official contracts are a useful leg-up for individuals, but figures show that small businesses are struggling to grow effectively. More than 9% of Brazilian high-growth firms are large companies, compared to 2.3% in the US. In fact, the average age of the fastest-growing Brazilian enterprises, defined as those adding 20% new jobs every year, is 14 years. Clearly, small businesses are hitting a ceiling.A major obstacle is digital exclusion: until 2014, none of Rio's favelas even existed on an online map, let alone their businesses, making them impossible to find or navigate to.The primary cause of this digital black hole is the physical danger posed to Google's street mappers, who would have to travel the favelas on foot.But when Google teamed up with nonprofit AfroReggae, they found that more than 90% of favela inhabitants use cellphones and have access to the internet via shared Wi-Fi networks and data plans. So they recruited residents to be on-the-ground mappers, paying them a wage for a 12-week programme.block_quotes_start Usain Bolt is an idol for us because running is for free - kids in the favela are born running block_quotes_endSo far, the teams have trained 100 residents in digital cartography tools, mapped 26 favelas and more than 3,000 small businesses, including Bar Do David."One of the verticals that benefited the most were hostels and hotels inside favelas, who are getting tourists from across the country now," said Bento, who is a local mapper.Similarly, Facebook is running a business programme in favelas to train entrepreneurs in Facebook Pages - although most Brazilians are digitally savvy in their personal lives, few in the favelas knew how to use it for their enterprises.For large tech companies such as Google and Facebook, it's a win-win situation: the favelas represent an enormous untapped market of new users who could become lucrative customers.Facebook, for instance, can benefit from advertising generated by these businesses through their pages, and Google can improve its own services with more data.story_article_left3Micro-entrepreneurs are also turning to technology to help communicate better, especially in preparation for the foreign tourist wave this summer.In a city where 95% of residents speak only Portuguese, Google has spent the past four months training one million tourist-facing businesses to use the Translate app.Google has also partnered with Uber, 99Taxi (a minicab alternative) and bus drivers, whom they trained in person, along with an online training course open to the public.For most Brazilians, mobile communication is synonymous with WhatsApp. Almost 96% of the internet-connected population - more than 100million people - use the Facebook-owned app regularly.For Brazilian businesses, WhatsApp has morphed from a chat app to a one-on-one customer service platform. According to research by Fernanda Saboia, of digital agency Huge Inc in Rio, 73% of small business owners use WhatsApp.Access to apps such as WhatsApp and Google Maps was key for business growth, but would-be entrepreneurs really lacked role models, said Bispo. To fix this, he is on a mission to invite Usain Bolt to Bar Do David for a big local meal next month."Usain Bolt is an idol for us because running is for free - kids in the favela are born running," he said. "I believe bringing him in here can help our people to dream bigger."- The Daily Telegraph, London..