How to Scale Nordic Fintechs to the World? (Key Insights: Sep 28th, 2021)
As part of Oslo Innovation Week 2021, the 5 Nordic Innovation Houses around the world — Silicon Valley, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo — came together and hosted a webinar on the topic of global expansions of Nordic fintechs, inviting 3 Nordic fintech pioneers to share their first-hand experiences on scaling their businesses to the global stages 👀
The event started with brief updates from the 5 Nordic Innovation House locations, including their upcoming programs and support services for the Nordic startups and tech companies. You can access the deck here.
After our introductions, we welcomed our wonderful speakers to the virtual stage: Liselott Johansson, CEO of Greater Than, Kanika Mittal, Regional Head APAC of Meniga, and Erik Ingvoldstad, Chief Innovation Officer & Co-Founder of EedenBull. Niklas Karvonen, Community Director of Nordic Innovation House Tokyo moderated the conversation.
Among the broad range of issues we covered, here are summaries of 3 of the main topics discussed (to watch the whole discussion, click here!).
[Topic 1] How do you choose the “right” market to enter, and how do you choose your local partner/customer? 🌎
Erik shared that Eedenbull had the ambition to go global from the start. After establishing their business in Norway, they wanted to go “as far as they can go”, and Australia was chosen for a few reasons: the personal relationships they had in the market and the cultural similarity with Europe.
Kanika says that above all new market entries need to be very well-planned. Product fit, market readiness (for example in her case, local markets’ awareness of ESGs), and local regulations are some of the key factors for Meniga to decide whether to enter, and whether to enter on their own or to have a local partner.
For Greater Than, Liselott shared that their decision is customer-driven rather than market-driven, and emphasized the importance of finding a customer that is the leader in the local market (for example, Greater Than works with Toyota in Japan and MSIG in Singapore), which will help you grow through your customers even if you do not have a physical office in that market.
In terms of choosing a partner/customer, Liselott shared her views that although smaller companies may seem easier to collaborate with, the amount of work can actually be equal to choosing a larger partner with a broader reach. Erik and Kanika also shared similar thoughts.
[Topic 2] How do you internally transfer knowledge between markets? How do you share new concepts/functions/lessons created and learned in different markets with the whole global team? 💡
Eedenbull is still small enough to share all information among the management team. One of their main concerns is to pay attention to lessons learned from different markets especially on regulatory issues.
Liselott shared that Greater Than’s technical platform is built like a Lego block and they create custom-made products by putting those blocks together, therefore it is crucial that everybody is informed when any new block is added to the platform and the function it has. Every week they have a global meeting called Happy Family Meeting where they keep everybody in the team updated.
Kanika says, for example, a negotiation in South Africa 6 years ago may be relevant to a negotiation happening now in Asia. The panelists have found a way to share the knowledge for now, but agreed that this might become challenging as the companies grow and scale.
[Topic 3] Can you share any experiences where you had to change your product or internal process to adapt to different markets and business cultures? 🛠
In the case of Meniga, they tailored their business model and added more à la carte options, so that Meniga’s services could be added on to what different customers have in their existing services. This module approach (which means tailoring the pricing as well) gave Meniga more flexibility, and helped them to expand in different markets. Kanika also pointed out that Asia is a relationship-driven market, which affects the way business development is addressed.
Liselott agreed and added that the fact that their founder used to live in Japan and has done business in Japan has been a contributing factor to their success in Japan. We tend to forget, but culture is very important.
Overall there was a consensus that cultural differences play a significant role when scaling to new markets. As Erik wrapped up, no one expects you to be perfect and know all the cultural nuances from the beginning, but being respectful, listening, and being mindful that you are coming into a new market, can take you far.
Thank you for reading, and special thanks to our wonderful panelists! 👏
To find out more about how our panel companies enter new markets, how the covid19 pandemic has influenced their businesses, when do they decide to establish local offices abroad and et cetera, please watch the recording below:
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Nordic Innovation House Tokyo is a community platform accelerating high-quality Nordic startups, scale-ups, and growth companies to Japan. Via our strong community and network, we connect Nordic companies into the right ecosystem stakeholders 🗼
ノルディックイノベーションハウス東京は、北欧５カ国のスタートアップ、スケールアップ、成長企業の日本進出を支援するコミュニティプラットフォームです。強力なコミュニティとネットワークを生かして、北欧企業と日本のステークホルダーを繋いでいきます。
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