Delivery
Patience tends to be something that online shoppers never have. Therefore, delivery is crucial to offer shorter terms. Luckily, Estonian companies Starship Technologies, Cleveron, ParcelSea (to name a few of them) have produced innovations in digital logistics by combining an ideal pro-business environment for R&D, world-class IT, and engineering skills. For example, supermarkets, already using Starship robots can keep a one-hour delivery promise. Sifted sees it as an advantage created by Starship last-mile robot service that many retail market leaders don´t have yet.
Starship is a delivery robots company founded by the members of the original development team that created Skype. Their small robots are designed to move along pavements at a pedestrian speed and navigate around people and objects using GPS, ultrasonic sensors, radar, and cameras. Those awaiting a package can monitor the robot’s journey on a smartphone. Starship is building a network of robots ready to serve us anytime, anywhere. Those cute tiny robots are already delivering restaurant foods and groceries in a number of cities around the world. These robots are green as well – one delivery consumes as much energy as a single use of the kettle.
Automated processes
One of the most positives of e-commerce business are the lowered costs, which come from the automation of order management, inventory management, checkout, billing, payments, shipping, and other operational processes lowering the number of employees required to run an e-commerce setup. However, an experienced automation partner is needed to connect all these processes. Eurora, Pactum, Linnworks, and Erply are the right companies to connect and automate all the different parts of your selling processes.
Eurora in an Estonian company that offers AI-based automated services that deal with customs regulations on the borders. In other words, it helps marketplaces and logistic companies move goods through customs and deal with regulations that different countries have. Eurora has trained an AI with machine-learning to look at random descriptions of, say a mobile phone and make sure all the shipping info for buying one is correct. “Thanks to scientific research, we do not have to do anything manually; our product is very scalable,” says Eurora’s Head of Marketing Alexander Maasik.
Online payment services
In payments, Estonia has produced globally successful companies including Fortumo, Monese, Tuum (former Modularbank), and unicorn Wise, each of whom has significant R&D, engineering, and 24/7, multilingual client service operations in Estonia.
Wise offers a free multi-currency business account to pay global suppliers and to receive Stripe and Amazon payouts for free. The company, founded in 2010 by ex-Skyper Taavet Hinrikus and IT talent Kristo Käärmann, to transform international money transfers cheap, fair, and simple. Estonia’s third unicorn, Wise went public on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021 and made the largest ever tech listing in London by market capitalisation. Among others, people like Richard Branson, and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, have invested in Wise vision.
Digital marketing
Before you can start generating e-commerce turnover, you need to make your e-store brand and your products known to customers. Professional digital marketing can enable quick and long-term results for that. Estonian digital advertising company Adcash, founded in 2007, one of the biggest players in the online advertising industry, trusted by Alibaba and 200M unique users every day, could be your best partner in digital marketing activities. According to Startup Estonia, Adcash is the second best performing startup in Estonia with a turnover of €6.9M in the third quarter of 2021.
It’s time to invest in Estonia
As the world’s most digitally enabled nation, Estonia’s digital and tech solutions are ahead of time in many areas. And that is what makes Estonia an emerging hub for global e-commerce – and a destination worth investing in and mine gold from e-commerce sales.
Read more about the e-commerce opportunities Estonia offers here or send us an e-Consulting request to get more detailed information.
