Fuelled by its “making illegal things legal” motto, AcelerateEstonia searches for regulatory blocks from within the private sector before developing policy recommendations for the Estonian government, ensuring that cutting-edge innovations have a “clear and accelerated” path to success.
Speaking to a Singapore media delegation, including The Edge Singapore, Petra Holm, digital transformation adviser at e-Estonia Briefing Centre, says that with Accelerate Estonia, the country can serve as a testbed for new products before they are scaled globally. She explains, “We position ourselves as a place where you can test your ideas that currently are very likely to be actually illegal because they are new. So, if you can prove that your innovation has potential and could benefit society in Estonia, we will change the law for you.
“And with that proof of concept, you go abroad because you can say that it is legal here [in Estonia]. So it gives a lot of very useful background for an innovative company to show something when they are trying to penetrate other markets.”
To achieve its objectives, Accelerate Estonia facilitates access to decision-makers to expedite public-sector processes, ensuring policy proposals advance faster than regulatory challenges are addressed. It also establishes regulatory sandboxes, which not only enable the safe testing of solutions but also allow businesses and governments to collect data to develop real-world-ready products and to make data-based policy decisions.
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For instance, Estonia is in the midst of changing legislation to allow 24/7 self-service pharmacies to operate, thereby facilitating access to medication, especially during off-peak hours.
Current regulations dictate pharmacy operating hours and mandate that pharmacists be physically present at the point of sale. However, a shortage of pharmacists and operating restrictions lead people to seek medication through emergency rooms and ambulance services. Based on the data, only 40% of these cases required urgent care, while many could have been resolved with a visit to the pharmacy.
To address the shortage of pharmaceutical talent and reduce reliance on emergency services for relatively simple medication dispensing, Accelerate Estonia collaborated with Grab2Go, a self-service pharmacy solutions company, to provide an automated way to purchase over-the-counter medications while offering access to professional pharmacists’ advice through video consultations.
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This solution also enables a single pharmacist to serve five to six patients from any corner of Estonia through video consultations, overcoming geographical and manpower constraints.
“As autonomous pharmacy solutions fall outside traditional regulatory frameworks, Accelerate Estonia’s support has enabled structured collaboration between Grab2Go, regulators and policymakers,” Grab2Go’s CSO and co-founder Reio Orasmäe tells The Edge Singapore. “This has been critical in moving from concept and pilot stage towards a scalable, compliant solution.”
The Edge Singapore understands that changes to legislation to allow 24/7 autonomous pharmacies are currently being drafted by Estonia’s Ministry of Social Affairs and the State Agency of Medicines, with the intention that the new legislation will come into effect this year.
E-Residency – access to EU market
Accelerate Estonia is just one of many initiatives by the Estonian government to strengthen business competitiveness and enhance the business ecosystem. One notable initiative is e-Residency, launched in 2014 and a world first. Initially conceived as a way to issue digital identities and status to people outside Estonia and provide access to Estonia’s e-governance services, the programme has morphed into an entrepreneurship enabler.
By becoming an e-resident, a person may start, run and grow businesses in Estonia without being physically present in the country, which, coincidentally, is a member state of the European Union (EU), the Eurozone, Nato and the OECD.
“Access to the EU, this is what you get, half a billion people [market],” shares Holm, who adds the EU also provides grants and funding to encourage business innovation. “There’s a lot of money, but there are not enough entrepreneurs in the EU that can use up all of the money that is available for start-ups, especially the green transition.”
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Funding initiatives for the EU’s green transition include Next Generation EU, Horizon Europe, the Life Programme, and the Innovation Fund, which collectively have a budget of more than EUR860 billion ($1.29 trillion).
“You become a new resident, you can do all your own taxes, you can apply for all of the EU funding just the same way, because it’s an EU company,” says Holm.
Estonia sees e-residency as benefiting the country’s economy not just by stimulating business activity but also through taxation. In 2025, e-Residency contributed a total of EUR124.9 million to state coffers.
Estonia’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications Erkki Keldo says that the success of e-Residency reinforces the country’s commitment to fostering a conducive business environment. “Every euro invested in e-Residency brought more than EUR12 back to Estonia last year [and] this is a clear signal that investing in digital services works,” says Keldo. “E-Residency, together with a business-friendly tax system, offers entrepreneurs a simple and modern way to do business globally while also helping to grow the Estonian economy.”
According to government data, e-residents established 5,556 new companies in the country in 2025, a 15% y-o-y increase. On a cumulative basis, Estonia has more than 135,000 e-residents from 185 countries, with e-residents setting up one in every five new Estonian companies each year, totalling more than 39,000 businesses so far.
Despite the success of e-Residency, the country is not resting on its laurels. Enterprise Estonia, the government agency responsible for the programme, is seeking to further streamline processes to make it easier to establish companies in the country. This entails making e-residency “cardless”, i.e. shifting from a physical identification card to smartphone-based onboarding with remote identity verification.
Liina Vahtras, managing director of the e-Residency programme, says: “Today, the biggest obstacle to the development of e-Residency is the slow and cumbersome process associated with using a physical plastic card. The easier and faster it is for a foreigner to establish a company in Estonia, the sooner they will begin generating revenue here.
“Our analysis shows that card-free, fully mobile e-Residency would increase company formation by at least 20% and would bring the state an additional EUR3 million to EUR9 million in tax revenue each year. The demand for speedy and cost-efficient entrepreneurship is rising, and our goal is to make e-Residency as simple as possible.”
Latitude59 — nurturing start-ups all over the world
Besides developing policies to enhance the country’s attractiveness as a business hub, the Estonian government strongly collaborates with the private sector to nurture entrepreneurship and develop a vibrant start-up culture, evidenced by the country’s 10 unicorns — start-ups valued at over US$1 billion — one of the highest per capita in the world.
Considered the flagship startup and technology event in the Baltics, Latitude59 — a reference to Estonia’s location — was first held in Estonia in 2012. The event, supported by the Estonian government, aims to foster collaboration among start-ups, investors and key stakeholders across a wide range of industries.
“We see ourselves acting as a bridge between Estonia’s highly digitised and successful startup environment and rapidly growing tech and innovation sectors around the world,” Latitude59 CEO Liisi Org tells The Edge Singapore. “Over the years, this has translated into tangible outcomes, from startups securing funding and entering new markets to long-term cross-border partnerships between investors, corporates, and founders that were first initiated at Latitude59.”
In 2025, Latitude59 held satellite events in Kenya, South Africa and Singapore (for the second time). Sharing why Latitude59 chose Singapore to host an event, Org describes the Lion City’s startup ecosystem as one of Asia’s “leading” ones, with strong interest among Estonian entrepreneurs and founders in Singapore’s success story and collaboration.
“With a population of 5.9 million and around 1,300 active deep tech start-ups, Singapore serves as an important role model for Estonia, which has set the goal of reaching 500 deep tech companies by 2030,” says Org.
A matter of business competitiveness — collaboration and openness to failure
Estonia has a population of 1.36 million and a small domestic market, so most of its economy is export-oriented, with around 65% in services, tilted towards fintech, e-governance, and engineering.
Given a local market too small for competition, collaboration between Estonian companies is key to the country’s economic and business competitiveness. “It is a lot more friendly than you would imagine a business environment to be,” says Holm.
In addition to collaboration, the environment is forgiving of failure, suggests Holm. “We know that people are going to fail,” she says. “What we expect is that they do it quicker, pivot, move on, right, but we allow them to test ideas.”
And it is these facets — collaboration, and openness to failure — of Estonia’s business culture that facilitate a thriving and dynamic startup system, where ‘making illegal things legal’ is not just a catchy tagline, but a creed for innovation.
