Estonia’s Entrepreneur and IT Minister, Urve Palo was in India just a few whiles ago for a week-long trip covering Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai. Her trip in India has yielded positive results for our country as Minister Palo talked of a fruitful Estonia-India partnership in the IT sector.
She also mentioned how Estonia’s Entrepreneur and IT Minister, Urve Palo
What would the partnership have in store?
Estonia is home to several globally known startups like that of Skype. The country had taken to e-solutions and almost 80% of its population makes use of the internet in the everyday lives. Startups ranging from that of cyber-security to smart cities, drones, and 5G thrive in Estonia.
Minister Palo believes that a collaboration with India would be a win-win situation for both the countries.
As per reports, Estonia requires around 7000 IT professionals immediately. The country has invited the IT specialists to come work there.
They have also launched ‘study in Estonia’ as a mission to encourage youngsters to get a quality education in Estonia and even work in the country as well.
E-Residency Program for startups
The e-residency programme gives the startups in India to be an e-resident, i.e. they can avail Estonia’s e-services, irrespective of where they are located. Estonia already has over 30,000 e-residents from 152 different countries of which 1,200 are from India.
This is an ideal opportunity to help the startups with their business and take it to the global platform.
With this program, the government of Estonia would be offering a access to a government-issued digital ID, thus enabling them to open a global EU company online while working from India. This would, thus, become, something like ‘Make in India, Sell in Europe’ scheme.
The Indian startups can then have access to the 500 million people in the European market.
While talking about the Estonia and India relations, Kaspar Korjus, Managing Director of Republic of Estonia’s e-Residency programme, said,
“The size of our countries might be very different, but Estonia and India actually have many things in common. Like Estonia, India has always been a very entrepreneurial country. India has the world’s largest freelance workforce with the highest percentage working in software development and technology, while Estonia is a global leader in ICT technologies, especially in e-government.”
Estonia would reach out to Indian startups through a series of roadshows and industry tie-ups in the next 12 months. The programme looks forward to enrolling over 200 startups during 2018.
Estonia not the only one interested in Indian startups
In November 2017, GOInternational Finland, a Nordic International Accelerator hosted Smart City Bizhack India at its headquarters in Helsinki. Bizhack was the first Indian-themed event to be hosted alongside Slush, an international technology conference organised annually for startups and tech talent to meet top-tier international investors, executives and media at Helsinki, Finland.
Similarly, Karnataka government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the French Nodal Agency, Business France India to develop and intensify mutually beneficial cooperation for promoting startups and the ecosystems in both countries. Again, earlier in October 2017, the Indo-Finnish Market Entry Acceleration Programme was launched as a flagship initiative by GOInternational Finland. GOInternational Finland is deeply involved in the cross-border collaboration between India, Finland, and the Nordics.It aims to facilitate smart city and village innovation in India and help Indian startups with several innovative techniques.
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