e-Residency for Global Entrepreneurs

This article is written by Milambo Kabeleka, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Kaspar Korjus is the Managing Director of e-Residency in the Republic of Estonia. He started the e-Residency program for the government of the Republic of Estonia as a way of becoming a fully digital nation and opening its borders to the world.

E-Residency is a digital nation for global citizens run by the Estonian government.

Estonia is a decentralized state, a nation with an estimated population of 1.3million citizens.  In a little over three years, it has built a digital nation that is run by a system. This system offers amenities like any physical nation. Each citizen is given a digital identity which allows them to have access the system, and enables them to pay for taxes, healthcare or even the police.

The e-Residency nation , started as a government startup has in the past few years grown from just a landing page to about 25000  residents. It continues to empower entrepreneurs from all over the world

The main reason people join this digital nation is to have the freedom to run their companies globally.  Many entrepreneurs with innovative ideas that can have a global impact are usually held back by the different restrictions of physical boarders. E-Residency allows entrepreneurs to reach their full potential by opening doors to a boarder-less nation where they can remotely set up a company, open a bank account and have access to financial institutions or make payments through PayPal .Great business ideas are no longer limited to where you live.

Founders from different countries have registered as citizens of Estonia. They are from various countries such as Ukraine. Russia, turkey. As of today, over 4000 companies have been registered. Of these, most of them are from Ukraine.

The government gives you an identity that gives you the freedom to run your company from anywhere in the world. Establish a company within a day, access banking services, digitally sign documents and contracts, and declare Estonian taxes online. No matter what country you’re from, unleash your entrepreneurial potential.

Who is e-Residency for?

The world is becoming more digital with each passing day. Millions of people want to do business globally for various reasons, such as access to the global market, easy way of transferring money internationally. While other countries push people away with physical boarders, Estonia pulls them in by opening its boarders.

E-Residency is open to everyone, from anywhere in the world. It has opened doors for a lot of entrepreneurs to get on the global market.  Examples of these include:

1.A Freelance  writer from Ukraine, doing most of the work online, in need of a fast and easy way of transferring money. E-Residency can solve this problem as it allows for easy international payments through financial institutions like PayPal.

2.An entrepreneur running a startup in India and in need of access to cross border capital to scale their business, e-Residency enables that by providing access to EU customers and EU startup funding.

3.Digital nomads that want to run their company after moving to a new country would be able to setup and manage their business remotely with e-Residency .

4.An entrepreneur with a company outside the EU that wants to partner with one of the biggest known companies registered on the EU market can get its entry point with e-residency.