New Market Entry Camp in Brazil

Brazil is an attractive market for Swiss start-ups in many ways. The new Market Entry Camp can help young businesses to enter markets, for example in the energy sector. Swissnex Brazil has good contacts in this sector, developed in previous projects, and there is (still) far less regulation than in other sectors. Furthermore, there is huge market potential, e.g. in the development of smart grids, as the sector moves towards renewable energies. Swiss start-ups showing an interest in attending the Market Entry Camp in Brazil have already been contacted. The team in Rio and Sâo Paolo wants to use the initial camps to find out exactly how the young businesses can best benefit from their stay in Brazil. They want to continue to develop the programme from the pilot phase to an established regular offering.

Local partners are key
It is quite a challenge to enter the Brazilian market. On the one hand there is the language barrier: English is becoming more widely spoken, but without a knowledge of Portuguese it is often still difficult to get the information you need. Personal contacts are also very important in the Brazilian business world. But it takes time to build up reliable relationships with business partners, and for Swiss entrepreneurs this is uncommonly difficult. Start-ups can really only hope to enter the Brazilian market if they can work with local partners.

Experience from AIT programmes
Swissnex Brazil has been running Academy Industry Training (AIT) jointly with the ETH Lausanne since 2014. This is aimed at researchers from Switzerland and Brazil who are interested in launching their projects on the market. Staying for one week in the country abroad, the researchers engage in networking, become familiar with the particulars of market entry in that country and consider how to proceed. The swissnex team in Brazil can use the wealth of valuable experience gained from this programme in setting up the Market Entry Camp.

More information on the website of Swissnex Brazil.

(Press release)

Picture: Swissnex Brazil