Written by Pierre Sorlut

05-28-2014 | LUXEMBOURG

Businesses supported, but recruitment problematic

Prior to the 10×6 start-up of the Paperjam Business Club, under the sponsorship of the Minister of Economy Étienne Schneider, one of the speakers, Loïc Didelot (Pindo) analyzes the business ecosystem in Luxembourg.

Mister Didelot, on wednesday evening you will present your project Pindo within 6 minutes. How would you summarize it in a few words?

“Pindo is a start-up that aims to resolve a problem that is frequently encountered here in the Grand duchy, namely one person managing several smartphones. One might be privately used, the other for work or even one in French, the other one Luxembourgish or other combinations. Pindo’s slogan is ‘One smartphone is enough’. Via our applications and services we combine business and private usage on one single smartphone. This is in line with the BYOD (bring your own device) principle after which the employee is working with his private smartphone in exchange for a compensation and thanks to some adjustments. From an ecological point of view this is a win win situation. The worker can choose the type of smartphone that he likes and the employer is liberated from the daily management of a fleet of mobile devices that tend to break or get lost. Our offer is maily adressed to small and medium companies. At this point, we are in active beta phase. Our first clients have signed a contract, and are ready to validate the concept and functionality of our application. The distribution under a marketing plan by our sales force will start in september.”

This is not the only project that you are leading and more will join these solutions offered to SMEs

“Yes. Next to Pindo, and already since six years, I am leading Mixvoip, a cloud telephony service for SMEs. We are the undiscovered leader of this market in Luxembourg with about 500 business customers. Within one year we grew from eight to 12 employees at our site in Sandweiler. Then, there is Forschung Direkt, who leads our activities in the field software development. It is located in Bulgaria.”

Is this offshoring linked to labor costs in Luxembourg?

“Kabam and Zynga (two american companies that are active in the field of network games and that have left Luxembourg) are not isolated cases. Right now, recruting is our main problem. It is not easy to compete with the state to employ young Luxembourg computer science or telecommunication graduates after their studies. On the other side, I have to acknowledge that in Luxembourg the state helps companies with subventions. They are also cleverly guided by initiatives like Luxinnovation. Still, recruiting stays the main problem that we encounter. As the saying goes, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Nevertheless, Luxembourg stays a fertile ground for growth and development for us and our activities. Two years in a row we recorded a growth of 100%, and we hope to be able to keep it this way in the upcoming years. We have to count on the support of our national authorities to find the right economic environment for our development and of course, like every company, we have to be able to benefit from sufficient financial capacity to maintain the pace of our growth.”

Don’t miss any more news or articles!