After small Slovenia has been recognised as the fastest-growing Innovation follower by European Innovation Scoreboard, it was “unavoidable” to have a stand, organised by the Luxembourg-Slovenian Business Club (LSBC) at global tech fair ICT Spring 2016.

The LSBC brought Comtrade, Analitica, Skylabs, Cosylab and ProNew Tech, LSBC's partner from Luxembourg, to the eye of the ICT Spring event attendees. The stand was also visited by Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and H.E. Matjaz Sinkovec, of the Embassy of Slovenia in Brussels.

“Meeting with the representatives of four Slovenian IT companies during ICT Spring was an exciting opportunity to get a first-hand picture of the current Slovenian tech expertise. Companies are well-equipped and highly keen to foster business in domains like Big Data, Fintech, Space and general IT services. A good cooperation can be developed with Luxembourg companies in these strategic fields. Furthermore, our country plays a role as an internationally trusted center and doorway to the global market. We are confident that potential partnerships can be explored in the near future with Slovenian companies”, said François Thill, deputy director of e-commerce and information security in Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy.

Slovenia’s innovation, high IT literacy and a highly skilled workforce for Luxembourg

The LSBC promotes potential of ties between the two countries, mostly in fintech, spacetech, analytics, big data and cybersecurity. Those who met exciting tech from Slovenia saw how Slovenia is an excellent source of research and development, innovation and high IT literacy and a highly skilled workforce, as well as exit to the SEE market.

Luxembourg as a next business stop

Also, Luxembourg is suitable and interesting for companies expanding from Slovenia’s direction. Matej Sosteric, Business Director FinTech in Comtrade, stated “As a leading IT company in South-East Europe, Comtrade is planning to expand its FinTech operations to Luxembourg since this country is a robust banking hub. In order to achieve this goal, we concluded an agreement with Luxembourg-Slovenian Business Club (LSBC) and our first activity was to participate at the ICT Spring fair which was held in European Convention Center in Luxembourg in the beginning of May. This was a good decision enabling us to make many contacts with potential partners and customers to drive a number of follow-up activities. As the fair ended, we can conclude that there really is much potential in the Luxembourg market and our work with LSBC is opening up good opportunities to win our first project relatively soon.”

Luxembourg already as headquarters

As a proof of LSBC concept of Luxembourg being the right market for innovative ideas, BitStamp has moved its headquarters to Luxembourg where they will launch regulated services across the EU. After establishing by Slovenians Nejc Kodric and Damijan Merlak two years ago, BitStamp became the first fully EU-licensed and regulated bitcoin exchange in Europe and had chosen Luxembourg thanks to its strong infrastructure and the financial and security awareness.