P1 Competitive economy
1.3. More exports by the Central Baltic companies to new markets
Central Baltic
01.04.2019 - 31.12.2021
€996 813
€787 457
Sub-Saharan Africa, India and UAE are growing markets and have enormous business potential for technology companies located in the Central Baltic region, especially in the fields of Viable Citizen Solutions and Intelligent Transportation Systems. At the same time, they are complicated markets to enter. Cross-border cooperation provides a framework to face market entry challenges jointly. Sharing the costs of activities such as marketing, exporting competence building and the application of export support tools among SME business networks, can facilitate the process.
eMesai project is developing a sustainable cross-border cooperation model to increase export in the target markets by coordinating:
• cross-company marketing to the foreign markets in question.
• mentoring among SME-s
• systematic SHARING of the existing business leads and know-how among CB SME-s.
eMesai supports at least 50 SME-s export and achieves at least 9 new sales in target markets.
Eesti Infotehnoloogia ja Telekommunikatsiooni Liit
Country: EE
Partner budget: 362.518 EUR
Amount of ERDF funding: 295.960 EUR ERDF
Latvijas Informācijas tehnoloģiju klasteris
Country: LV
Partner budget: 237.601 EUR
Amount of ERDF funding: 193.978 EUR ERDF
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Country: SE
Partner budget: 396.693 EUR
Amount of ERDF funding: 297.520 EUR ERDF
Achieved results
eMesai supported SME's entering the Sub-Saharan, Indian and UAE markets
The project supported SMEs' efforts to enter the Sub-Saharan, India and UAE markets to reach the main objective of increasing the Central Baltic SMEs' export to these regions/countries. This was done by 3 strong CB ICT clusters from Sweden, Estonia and Latvia through joint export competence building and jointly applying export support tools.
During the project 1 sale and 1 MoU was signed. In addition, more than 10 sales and potential sales after the end of the project were recorded.
The project supported altogether more than 200 SMEs’ export efforts.
As main activities of the project following were implemented:
- 2 joint export seminars (Tallinn & Riga) and 1 export webinar;
- 2 joint study trips on joint marketing (Tallinn & Riga)
- 2 joint webinars on: how to participate in World Bank tenders and how to participate in UN tenders in African countries/India
- 3 joint trade missions to regional events/world congresses (Transform Africa Summit and ITS World Congresses), 1 joint trade mission to the UAE and 3 webinars to prepare for these missions
- Raising awareness seminars about digitalization benefits of the local stakeholders/potential clients at e-Governance conferences in Tallinn in 2019, 2020 and 2021 online, EEN Sweden online matchmaking event and at a webinar on how to do business in India digitally
- Local market expert service in India and in the UAE for altogether 16 SMEs from 3 countries, updates of business profiles and solution descriptions for Estonian SMEs for fitting better for the target markets and participation in the Business Support to EU-India Policy dialogue project events for specific Swedish SMEs with personal invitations.
The significant part of the project implementation fell to the Covid pandemic, and the project had to adopt with new circumstances. The partnership was successful in that.
- More than 200 supported SME's
- Joint export seminars
- Joint trade missions
Internet presence
Project website Estonian Lead Partner
Project website Swedish Partner
Project website Latvian Partner