AEXI – Advanced Export Intelligence B.V.  was created in 2021 and established in Amsterdam, one of the world’s most connected and entrepreneurial cities. But its genesis goes back further, much further, to the early 1990s when its founders, Wim Naudé  and Martin met at North-West University in South Africa. There they became fascinated with what was then the cutting edge of “big data” and “simulation models” namely social accounting-based general equilibrium modelling. They went on to develop and apply these tools internationally to issues of trade and sustainable development.

Being born-and-bred academic entrepreneurs, Wim and Martin both started successful earlier start-ups based on data analytics. In 2005 Wim started, as founding director and chairman, a spin-out company for the university called Afriforte (Pty) Ltd, with the logo “metrics that matter” – reflecting its business model based on advanced data science support decision-making. He went on to join the United Nations University where he was involved in the initial workshops that established UN Global Pulse, and subsequently moved to the Netherlands where he was Professor in Entrepreneurship and Business and Maastricht University and Germany, where he still teaches technological innovation and entrepreneurship at RWTH Aachen University. He is currently also affiliated with Cork University Business School in Ireland, and the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork.  In 2016 Martin started a spin-out company for the university called Trade Research Advisory (Pty) Ltd, which honed and perfected a decision-support model to filter out export opportunities based on COMTRADE data, going on to validate this methodology in projects for amongst others the London School of Economics, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Australian State of Queensland government.

Fast forward to the great pandemic of 2020, they were asked to present some of their ideas on using big data to support international entrepreneurship at a seminar of Amsterdam Data Science. This was just at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and they showed how the Netherlands could use trade big data to find alternative markets for the export of milk powder formula milk to China, given that the Chinese economy was at that stage in lockdown. Almost immediately after this they were asked to find alternative and new export markets for Portugal in the light of the effects of the pandemic.

These timely and relevant applications dramatically illustrated to Wim and Martin the power of data-driven decision making in trade, and moreover raised questions: why is this not used more widely? why are decisions on exporting left so much to coincidence, luck and historical accident?

The fact of the matter is that exporting is incredibly complex and risky. You need an intelligent approach to make a success of it. One challenge is lack of awareness of the existence of and uncertainty about the size and nature of particular export opportunities. An intelligent approach to export promotion overcomes these challenges. An approach that is fact-based supporting data-driven decisions.

AEXI provides a smart approach for our clients, using advanced data science tools combined with human skills and experience.

Every second, some good is traded across borders, and this generates data. Every day, billions of new data records are created, giving a detailed insight into what is produced, shipped, and consumed across the globe. This massive volume of data can be overwhelming. Finding actionable information from it is like finding a needle in a haystack.  This barrier to international trade is what is what Wim and Martin set out to overcome when the established AEXI.