On December 5, the "Echo 2024" Tencent News Education Channel Annual Forum was held at the Wanda Vista Hotel in Beijing, China. With the theme of "Integration of Science and Technology and Innovation to Build a Future Together", the forum brought together experts and scholars in the education field, industry leaders, professional research institutions, education media and education investors to exchange ideas on how technological development can help education, explore the impact of educational innovation on the future, and seek opportunities for cooperation in the industry to unite people and make common progress.
At the invitation of the organizing committee of the "Echo 2024" Tencent News Education Channel Annual Forum, Laura Luo, co-founder of Path Global and general manager of Globevisa Project Company, gave an on-site speech. The following is the transcript of the speech.
Host: Hello, Mrs. Luo. We are glad that you are here to attend the 2024 Tencent Education Channel Annual Forum! Please say hello to all netizens and briefly introduce yourself and your institution.
Laura: Hello friends of Tencent Education Channel, I am Laura from Global Study Abroad. I am very happy to meet you again this year.
Global Overseas Travel is a global service chain founded in 2002, focusing on serving every high-net-worth family in global travel, settlement and home. We have established more than 40 integrated service companies and partner companies in more than 20 countries and regions around the world, with a total number of more than 800 employees worldwide and nearly 100 immigration lawyers, providing consulting and follow-up home services in more than 10 languages. So far, we have helped customers from more than 102 countries and regions successfully obtain overseas identities and settle down smoothly.
Our business has expanded from a single Canadian immigration and study abroad service 20 years ago to now covering investment immigration, entrepreneurial immigration, visa services, study abroad education and overseas property, company registration, bank account opening, retirement reunion and childbirth, identity renewal, etc., covering more than 300 projects in more than 40 countries and regions. Each project has a complete vertical product line and can tailor overseas study plans for our guests.
Host : What will be the biggest changes in your organization or what achievements will it have in 2024?
Laura : In 2024, which is about to pass, not only the global economy and international situation have undergone great changes, but we have also made a new breakthrough. In the past 22 years, we have mainly served those individual clients who mainly hope to seek breakthrough changes in their current lives or have new plans for their children's education, so they will customize different immigration and settlement plans according to their needs and family budget.
In this process, we have helped more than 300,000 clients with identity planning, and noticed an increasingly prominent group - entrepreneurial clients. They apply for overseas identities not only for their own or their children's education planning, but also to move their careers or companies to different countries or regions. Some entrepreneurs even want to expand their business overseas, such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, or North and South America. They not only want to move their families overseas, but also want to go overseas with their companies, executives and core teams. Based on this, Globe launched a new business line sub-brand PathGlobal at the beginning of this year, focusing on serving enterprise-level clients' overseas business.
PathGlabal, the new business line of Global Overseas, has only recently become independent from Global's main business, but over the past decade, we have helped many business owners and executives successfully move overseas. At a time when global competition is increasingly fierce and talent competition is particularly prominent, many immigration destination countries are tightening investment immigration policies while continuously relaxing policies on entrepreneurial immigration and technical talent immigration. In recent years, the number of entrepreneurial clients we serve has grown exponentially. At present, we provide various visa application services including corporate employee work visas, business visas, labor visas, etc. for customers with overseas needs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Dubai, Canada, the United States, Hungary, Greece, Spain and other places, as well as follow-up services such as company registration, tax and legal consulting, settlement, children's schooling, and permanent residence status conversion. So far, we have helped tens of thousands of employees from tens of thousands of companies successfully obtain status.
Host : Specialization is one of the directions of corporate brand development. What are the characteristics and core competitiveness of your organization?
Laura : First of all, there are many institutions that provide services for enterprises going overseas, and even many law firms, accounting firms, or secretarial companies can provide such services to enterprises. What is different from them is that we will focus our main research and development efforts on visa and identity processing for corporate employees, because the in-depth study of the immigration policies of various destination countries is the core advantage of Global Going Abroad.
At present, we have more than 100 professional immigration lawyers from more than 40 countries and regions, many of whom have participated in the formulation and revision of their countries’ immigration laws. At the same time, we have invited nearly 30 former immigration officers from North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and other countries to serve as our internal exclusive consultants. Therefore, we have a firm grasp on the core business of researching and developing immigration and visa laws. We are even partners of many law firms and accounting firms, specializing in visa and identity processing for their corporate clients.
When companies go overseas, the most important issue is to solve the "people" problem. Let's not talk about the recruitment of local personnel. From the perspective of visa application, whether it is faster or slower, or even the length of validity, it may affect the timeline of the entire company's overseas expansion. Therefore, for our customers, the service we provide is the most valuable solution to the "people" problem itself. For example, not long ago, we undertook a large-scale overseas project for a domestic company to undertake construction projects in Europe. The customer hoped to bring part of the domestic construction team to Europe, so the most important thing was to formulate various plans for the allocation of work visas and seasonal labor visas in this team according to the local labor protection law, which is very technical. After the visa link was settled, we quickly contacted accounting firms, law firms and local settlement companies for the customer in the local area, providing a series of services from moving to renting a house locally and children's schooling.
Secondly, Global’s operating model has always been referred to internally as the “Amazon model,” which is a model similar to the open shelves and self-selection model in a supermarket, allowing our customers to choose their preferred countries according to their own needs.
We offer project options in more than 160 jurisdictions and can quickly develop an executable plan. In practice, we have found that many of our overseas corporate clients have more than one target market. For example, a company that integrates manufacturing and sales first builds a factory in Vietnam and then hopes to sell its products to Central and Southern Europe. Therefore, when companies need to conduct business in multiple regions at the same time, our Amazon model shows obvious advantages. Our local companies and partner companies can provide 24-hour uninterrupted multilingual services worldwide.
Host : What kind of changes will occur in your field in the next 3-5 years, and how will your organization respond?
Laura : I often see a saying that if you don’t go overseas, you will be out of the game. It is a challenge and an opportunity. I think this is also the most mainstream direction for Chinese companies at present. In the current wave of globalization, the global economic structure is constantly reshaping and reorganizing every day. China has gradually transformed from its original role as a "world factory manufacturer" to a "global resource integrator". Since 2023, the overseas expansion momentum of Chinese companies has been very strong. According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, the number of non-financial foreign investment companies and the total investment amount increased by 23.1% and 11.4% respectively last year. Recently, after the US election, we instantly received a lot of inquiries from different parts of the world, including Chinese companies and even many local American companies browsing our official website.
I believe that the pace of globalization cannot be stopped by human power. This is an irreversible trend. The next 3-5 years should be an era of more frequent and intensive global talent flow, and an era for global companies to set sail. Under this trend, we will first provide companies with visa services and talent migration solutions from a more compliant perspective. We will not only establish local companies in immigration exporting countries, but also establish our localization companies and professional development teams in more immigration destination countries, becoming a full-category immigration and visa supplier.
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