As part of London Tech Week 2020, we were delighted to co-host for the sixth time a webinar around “Tech Growth UK: Trends and Opportunities” along with other partners including the Department for International Trade, JMB Partnership and Burges Salmon.

Andrew Elwick, Head of Technology & Creative Industries for the Department for International Trade compered the webinar and shared compelling statistics and insights including that in 2019, UK digital tech businesses saw a turnover of £200 billion, a 27% increase from 2018. What’s more, the digital tech sector has grown six times bigger than the rest of the UK economy over the past eight years. The UK is home to five of the top 20 Best European cities for Tech Investment: London, Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester and Bristol. The UK clearly represents a great opportunity for market entry tech companies with many UK accelerators demonstrably driving growth of international start-ups.

Joanna Dodd gave a presentation around establishing a PR presence in the UK marketplace specifically for market entry tech companies and why it’s important in such a competitive market.

During the webinar, a poll was run amongst attendees which revealed the following:
73% of market entry tech companies are very optimistic about their future in the UK and only 9% of respondents revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had had an impact on their market entry plans, which further backs up our findings talking to many tech companies who are finding that COVID-19 has levelled the playing field for international brands looking at the UK market. The makeup of the attendees very much reflects our view of the market entry landscape with founders who are just starting their market entry plans as well as other companies who have already come to the UK and are heading in the right direction compared to those who are already present but are not getting the traction they would have hoped for. The sectors of attendees included a wide range of fields including Fintech, Edtech, Health/Medtech, Cyber Security, Constructiontech and Eventtech.