Top Nordic and Baltic Startups In UK


London is an attractive option for startups expanding to new markets.

Startups are designed to be intrinsically scalable, allowing them to grow almost indefinitely big with rather limited amount of resources. At the same time, the most important part about building great companies is acquiring the best available talent.

To do both, startups eventually need to open more offices and very often we find more and more companies from the Nordics jumping on a plane to the UK.

It is a logical choice as they have the market, the investors, talent and the location is close to home. So together with UKTI, we thought of listing some interesting companies that have taken the leap to UK and are looking to expand. Some are familiar faces, but also plenty of fresh ones to go through and add to your radar:

Norway

Nimber

Nimber is a collaborative peer-to-peer service to deliver goods from one place to another. Nimber can be used to deliver anything, literally anything. Starting from food and ending with cars and boats. They already boast a payments turnover over EUR 2 million monthly.

Kahoot!

Gamifying the classroom, Kahoot already has 20 people in London and are hiring. They have recently closed €5.7 million funding round in order to foster expansion. UKTI helped introduce Kahoot! to UK contacts working closely with policy, and helped nurture the Creative City alliance between Oslo, London and Austin, founded by among others Kahoot! CEO Johan Brand.

Unacast

By operating the world’s largest proximity network and ingesting e.g. beacon interactions from partners all over the world, Unacast makes advertising based on offline data in online channels smart, global and scalable. They are now hiring in London, New York and Oslo marking their rapid growth. UKTI supported Unacast by providing Co-founder and COO Kjartan Slette with information on setting up a UK business and introducing them to key partners. Unacast was awarded the Best New Company in the Nordics in the 2015, and recently named one of the top 10 companies in the growing 3,5 billion Retail Analytics Industry.

​Finland

Smarpshare

Employee advocacy solution for your company and winners of Arctic15. Smarpshare went from six to more than twenty five people in under a year and grew internationally. Today, they boast a brand new UK office.

Relex

Relex provides solutions for supply chain management and have been growing very quickly recently and raised over EUR 20 million. UKTI supported Relex in their UK market entry and later on their preliminary steps towards the US.

Plan Brothers

Plan Brothers makes legal paperwork a breeze. They have won the “Take That Tech To The UK” competition organised by UKTI Finland & Baltics and were provided a London establishment package.

Kiosked

Kiosked is working on solving the problem of ad relevancy by introducing new solutions to the market. Recently they have received EUR 15 Million from EIB and in total have over EUR 30 million in financing. UKTI has been involved in many steps of their UK expansion.

Smartly.IO

Basically making Facebook and Instagram ad automation as easy as it gets. Kristo Ovaska, the CEO, won founder of the year at the Nordic Startup Awards and they have since gone on to expand in the UK.

Nosto

Personalized shopping experience for customers of your company. Launched in 2013, Nosto already generated over 5 billion personalized recommendations to company customers.

Yoogaia

Lazy to go to the yoga studio? Yoogaia lets you do it at home. Founded in 2013, they have raised EUR 3.2 million to date and are quickly expanding in the UK.

Walkbase

Google analytics for offline stores. They have recently launched augmented reality advertising solution together with Samsung, targeting British companies. They have also raised over EUR 3.7 million.

Sweden

iZettle

Providing card payments through mobile phones. One of the top startups in Sweden that has raised over an impressive EUR 150 million and their UK operations are an important part to their growth.

Denmark

Trustpilot

Trusted review website that has been one of the most well known cased from Denmark. They employ over 400 people and have reached 13 million reviews this year.

​Estonia

Lingvist

Gives the promise of helping you to learn a language in under 200 hours. Originally out of Tallinn, they now have their main operations in London.

Transferwise

Perhaps the next Skype from Estonia, Transferwise is taking banks head-to-head in the exchange rate and transfer fees domain. They have raised over EUR 80 million, including an investment from Richard Branson and Peter Thiel. They now have their HQ in London although originally from Tallinn.

​Latvia

Giraffe360

A new way to sell items and places. Giraffe focuses on visualisation and uses VR experience to augment sales by letting customers see what they are buying in 360 degrees.

Lithuania

Vinted

Second hand clothing store that has been growing immensely. They report over 14 million listings on the website and operate out of London.

YPlan

Event discovery app that can be claimed to have won the event discover war. They have raised over EUR 33 million and are the next big home of Lithuania.

So next time you are in London, say hello to our babies and ask them about the experience.

Should you consider expanding also to UK? Please get in touch with Mari Aaltonen ([email protected].gov.uk) from UKTI and she will help you with all the details.