5 things you need to know before starting a business in Hungary as a foreigner

Opening a new business is always a challenge, but launching one overseas is especially difficult. If you want to stand any chance of success, here are 5 things that you need to know before you begin.

Where Will You Be Located?

So, you’ve decided to open a new business in Hungary? That’s great, but Hungary is a big place! You need to look much closer at the map and work out exactly where your business will be launching. As always in business, you should be making your decisions carefully and with purpose.

Don’t just throw a dart at the map and settle wherever it lands; research what Hungary has to offer and what your business can offer to Hungary.

Who is Your Target Audience?

Knowing your target demographic from the word go will enable you to hit the ground running when you finally make it to Hungary. The principles of defining your target audience remain the same wherever you are in the world – you are still looking for the same metrics and making the same considerations.

However, there may be subgroups in your niche present in other markets that don’t exist in your home market. Different cultures will sometimes approach the same products and services in different ways, to the point where some adverts simply won’t translate from the UK market to the Hungarian market.

Make sure you do your research and find out as much as you can about the people that you are going to be selling to.

What Are Your Administrative Obligations?

When you are launching a business in Hungary, you will need to register it via a process that shouldn’t take more than 4-5 days. Upon completing your registration, the company director or directors must then go and open a bank account in person. This means that you will need to take a trip to Hungary in order to launch your business officially; this isn’t one of those countries that you can just set a business up in remotely.

You need to thoroughly research what local laws and regulations will be applicable to your business.

Remember, Hungary is a part of the European Union. If you already have experience operating a business elsewhere in the EU, then you will already know more or less what to expect in terms of rules and regulations.

While EU member states do sometimes diverge from one another, they all adhere to the same baseline of minimum standards.