Mikritho is a Singapore-based upstart company, offering consulting services to other businesses which wants exposure in the Asian region.
It took three men and one lunch to create a business. That is the short version of the origin of the newly registered company Mikritho.
The long version is about three trailing spouses – Scandinavian male spouses to be exact – who started to meet regularly for lunch every Wednesday and named their weekly arrangement “Lunsjklubben”.
“The story about Lunsjklubben is a story in itself – but that is where we met,” explained Mikael B. Larsson.
Their company name Mikritho is an acronym based on Larsson’s and his two business partners’ first names. Michael contributes with the first two letters, Kristoffer Schram is the Kri and Tho is short for Thor Hansen.
Thor Hansen added:
“One day we asked ourselves: why didn’t we make good use of our respective abilities? We all have previous business experiences, so it seemed obvious to combine them with our good networks and contacts in Singapore.”
All three of them have wives with high positions in Singapore. One of works at the Norwegian Embassy and one at the Swedish Embassy and one is with Volvo Group Trucks, which is equal to a large network in the business world, they said.
“We consider Singapore a very good platform to start if someone wants to enter the market here or in the other Asian countries,” Kristoffer Schram said. “Our task is to take a look at the product or the service of our clients are providing, and help them find ways how to enter the market and expand. We investigate the market to find them the best partners with good references.”
Mikritho has had a surprisingly good start, since the opening of the company in May this year, according to the three spouses. Even before the official launch, they had the first deals waiting and since then there has been more demand for services than they can deliver.
But the three partners still keep their expectation at a realistically modest level. They pointed out that they do not want to seem bigger than they actually are. It takes time to enter a new market, and still some more time before they can expect to generate steady revenue, they said.
“The way we get paid is in the form of a small commission from the clients’ future revenue, but if we do not succeed in finding the right partners for our clients, it won’t cost them anything,” Thor Hansen said.
Hansen noted that they target small- and medium-sized businesses, which do not have the capacity to spend their own manpower in researching and testing a whole new market.
“We can be a very valuable and effective partner for a small business, which actually has an interesting product to launch,” he said.
Mikael B. Larsson and Kristoffer Schram are Swedish and Thor Hansen is Norwegian.
