Ajujaht is a competition that is funded by public and private sector. It was initiated by Enterprise Estonia (EAS). SEB bank has been the main sponsor of the competition since the opening season. Since 2016 Elisa Eesti, 2019 Maxima Eesti and 2020 Microsoft Development and Sales unit in Estonia are the main supporters of Ajujaht.

Why support Ajujaht? “If you want to make something of a good idea, you need good partners,” says Mart Maasik, the Head of Business Innovation with SEB. “Here in the bank we have a lot of experience when it comes to supporting new undertakings. We’ve been doing it for years. Some of the biggest companies in the country today have gotten where they are with a little bit of help from us along the way. But we don’t just finance them – we give them advice, when they’re just starting out and need it, on how to reach the top. Being an entrepreneur isn’t just about being in business: enterprising people create jobs and contribute to a better future. Together we help the economy grow.”

“We share the start-up mindset in a number of ways, really, including in how we run things on a day to day basis,” says Sami Seppänen, the CEO of Elisa. “That might sound like a contradiction in terms for a big, long-established company like ours, but actually it makes what we do a lot more effective. We set a lot of store by enterprise and the next generation, so contributing to exciting ideas in the shape of Ajujaht gives us the chance to keep growing ourselves, too.” Elisa is the major sponsor of Ajujaht, represented both on the jury and in the mentor programme.

According to Edvinas Volkas, Maxima found inspiration to join the largest competition of business ideas in Estonia in the success stories of recent years, which confirm that good and innovative solutions can be offered to both retail and food industry. “There are so many different processes in the retail industry that affect the shopping experience of customers. We hope that through meaningful collaboration, we will find inspiration as well as exciting new solutions that can be used by Maxima and elsewhere in the commercial sector,” Volkas added.

According to Tanel Erm, head of the Microsoft Development Center in Estonia, they came to support dreaming big. “We live in a small country, but the Microsoft development center in Estonia, which grew out of Skype, is an example that small but ambitious people go a long way. There are few countries in the world that have a small and sparse population as Estonia, but where technology giants would still constantly invest,” said Erm. They also hope to see technologically savvy teams at Ajujaht, who would be good partners for corporations in the future.