Having established a firm foothold in the local market, a rising number of home-grown start-ups are expanding beyond Myanmar in an effort to grow and make a name for the country on the global stage. 

“Once you reach the point where you have a decent share of the local market, you are going to look at horizontal growth,” said Jes Kaliebe Petersen, chief executive officer of Phandeeyar, a Yangon-based accelerator that provides funding and training for local technology start-ups.

Take Recyglo as an example, one of the ambitious Myanmar firms that have successfully expanded overseas. In a special agreement with the Malaysian government, the two-year-old local waste-management start-up last month opened its first overseas office in Kuala Lumpur and is expecting to become fully operational in Malaysia by November. 

It already has plans to expand further. “By 2020, we want to set foot in Cambodia,” said Ko Okka Phyo Maung, chief marketing officer of Recyglo.

Born out of Phandeeyar’s start-up challenge in 2017, the recycling start-up has secured over US$200,000 in investments over the past two years, enabling it to expand to the country’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw, and second-largest city, Mandalay. 



In May, Recyglo won first place in the Seedstars start-up competition in Yangon, making it eligible to represent Myanmar at Switzerland’s Asia Seedstars Summit.

With the aim of resolving Yangon’s waste collection and recycling problem, the start-up is now riding a trend of growing awareness of the importance of recycling. It already has 400 clients from local and international non-governmental organisations, corporations and hotels. Now, it is thinking big and wants to spread that awareness to the rest of the region.

For new firms, Myanmar is a great place to start as a testing ground with a “quickly growing professional class” that has just gone through digital transformation, said Peterson. 

“There is more than enough to do [for start-ups] just by looking at the local market,” he said. On the other hand, as these firms can now harness technology to overcome much of the barriers to business, a rising number are exploring overseas expansion. “It’s important to think globally,” Peterson said.