Estonian startup Willuwalk is offering assistance to parents in Estonia and Sweden

Tehnopol is part of the joint Northbound Scaleups (NBSCALE) project, which helps companies expand into new markets. Estonian startup Willuwalk went to Sweden to meet potential partners to work with.

Willuwalk is a mobile app that brings together and supports new parents. The current focus of the startup is on supporting parents who are returning to work, by making it possible for companies to offer solutions through the app to their staff as part of their motivation package.

CEO and co-founder of the company Elise Rand said that the meetings in Sweden went very successfully. “We learned valuable information about how companies in Sweden motivate their employees who have children, how they keep in contact during parental leave, and what the demands of Swedish law are in our area”, she said. The meetings confirmed that the founders of Willuwalk are on right path with the solutions they have created for companies, and the startup gained several useful contacts.

They have had Sweden on the radar as their next target market for a long time, and they took the first real steps in that direction through the NBSCALE project. Elise Rand explained that they see some similarities between the parental leave systems in Estonia and Sweden, and that the potential users of the app in that market are already aware of it and ready to use it. “The size of that market is clearly very important for us, and it is also relevant that within our team we have some knowledge of Swedish”, she said.

Similar apps already exist in Sweden, and Rand said that the existence of those platforms confirms that there is certainly demand in the market and a need for such solutions. The unique advantage of Willuwalk is that it offers a holistic solution that supports both the mental and the physical health of parents, and that helps them to keep in contact with their employer while they are on parental leave. This reduces the rate of people leaving their jobs, and so saves their employers those costs. “The app supports parents in returning to work, and also supports working parents”, explained Rand.

Willuwalk is already available and in use in Swedish, making it that much easier for the startup to enter the new market.

The next step planned is to present the solution that is approved in Sweden to the larger companies in Estonia. “Our ambition for the near future is to find clients in our home market and abroad by offering companies a holistic solution that supports parents and helps maintain communications between employers and employees while the employees are on parental leave”, said Rand.

Northbound Scaleups (NBSCALE) is a joint project run by Tehnopol, the Turku Science Park in Finland and Movexum in Sweden to help companies expand into new markets.