Markit Expansion Plans 2021 Last year, despite the Covid-19 influence we managed to expand to Mexico, Brazil, and Serbia. In 2021, we aim to break our expansion record with between 5 to 7 new country openings. China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Bosnia & Herzegovina are all certain to become active. India and The United Arab Emirates present some additional complexities but 2021 openings there are also quite feasible. Markit is already serving companies in 36 countries where we fulfill the IT purchasing requirements of 10,000+ international clients, including many of the Global Forbes 2000.Continued expansion, even in the face of the pandemic, perhaps even because of it, is important. Some of our larger international clients are operating in 40+ countries. In many of those markets no-one offers centralised ordering with local delivery, through an online marketplace with a single login system. So, they are not gaining the time and cost savings that they could - if Markit were operating there. Our target has not changed. It is not to cover all 200 countries in the world, but simply to cover all the key markets that will give the highest boost to Markit’s network value to our international clients. Focus on AsiaYou will note the Asian focus on this current wave of expansion.There are two primary reasons for this. Growth in IT hardware and accessory demand will be highest in the APAC region in the future and secondly, many of our clients simply want us there to support their operations, as we do in Europe and The Americas. Indonesia is a logical expansion target with its population of over a quarter of a billion people. Many of the Markit’s global customers have subsidiaries in Indonesia.Malaysia is one of the more developed countries in Southeast Asia. It nicely complements our expansion in the APAC region, because very often our customers that have operations in Singapore also have operations in Malaysia. As Markit CEO, Andres Agasild, alluded during his presentation at the World Procurement Congress in 2020, Markit is about delivering provable time and cost savings to our global clients who value the simplicity and transparency of our IT procurement solution and marketplace. The Markit solution will be a massive time saver in many of new APAC countries where traditional IT purchasing can be complex due to local cultural, financial, legal, and other factors. Every country added to the Markit network adds to our supplier network too. Our clients currently have access to products from 325 global IT distributors, this number will grow significantly once the new countries are active. To find out more about Markit’s expansion plans please contact Kairo Alloja, Head of Expansion at Markit.