TORONTO — MaRS Discovery District has secured commitments from more than 20 international organizations to help Canadian technology companies find customers abroad, as businesses look to diversity beyond the U.S.

The Toronto-based innovation hub signed eight memoranda of understanding Tuesday with trade and other innovation organizations. It said it expects agreements with other partners to follow in the coming weeks. The network includes groups from Japan, India, Australia, Germany, Thailand, Brazil, Spain and France.

The agreements are meant to create two-way “corridors” that connect Canadian companies with potential customers and partners in foreign markets, while also helping foreign companies do business in Canada, said MaRS CEO Grace Lee Reynolds. 

Lee Reynolds said details of the partnerships are still being worked out, but they will likely start as cohort-based programs to help groups of companies enter particular markets. The programs would target scaling companies that are past the startup phase, providing them with market insights and introductions to potential customers and other local partners, said Lee Reynolds. 

The initiative comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney pushes Canada to grow its economic relationships beyond the U.S. Canada has 16 free-trade agreements covering 51 countries and 1.5 billion consumers, and the federal government is aiming to double that market access through new agreements, including with India and Southeast Asian countries. Ottawa is also discussing a new alliance with the European Union in a bid to deepen economic and security ties.

Trade agreements, however, only go so far in helping startup and scaleup founders establish themselves in new markets, said Lee Reynolds.

It’s often a lack of capital and customers that stunt a company’s global expansion, she said. Of the two factors, the lack of customers is a problem that gets less attention, she added, arguing that it’s just as important. Lee Reynolds said that investors are looking for returns on their investments and that they will only really get that when they have sales and customers.

Limited familiarity of new markets, though, can be a barrier to landing customers there, Lee Reynolds said.

In a survey of 50 MaRS-affiliated founders, 47 per cent of the respondents said they had become more focused on markets outside the U.S. than there were 18 months ago, with Europe their top priority. Forty-one per cent said they had seen at least one promising international opportunity stall or fall through because they didn’t have a trusted local partner to help them navigate the market. Finding customers or partners was the most commonly cited barrier to expanding internationally, with 29 per cent of respondents citing the problem, ahead of access to capital.

MaRS has already tested versions of the model. Since 2020, it has run eight programs with Innovate UK, the country’s national innovation agency, supporting 60 British companies entering the Canadian market, eight of which have established operations in the country. It has worked with Invest Northern Ireland on a similar program. MaRS’ Mobility Unlimited Hub, an accelerator program funded by the Toyota Mobility Foundation, gives Canadian startups building products for people with disabilities access to the Japanese market, including industry experts and regulatory advisors, and helps them sell in other countries, too.

Lee Reynolds said MaRS is now trying to expand on the one-off programs to build an international network that will ideally give scaling Canadian companies easier access to more customers. “It’s to build on the things that exist and create something with permanence,” she said.