Last month, Stijn Nijhuis, CEO Enreach, was elected as the winner of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award during the final of the 25th Dutch edition of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program. This award has been handed out in more than sixty countries for over thirty years, and is intended to recognise entrepreneurship and to encourage and support entrepreneurs to get the best out of themselves, their customers and their employees.
This award comes exactly 10 years after Stijn won the Benelux Deloitte Fast 50 Award for Voiceworks, Enreach’s predecessor, in the first year hosted voice providers (other nominees that year in the Benelux were Voipro and Voxbone) emerged as a fast growing new segment. I can still see us sitting in that room in Rotterdam when the winner was announced, and later going to London for the European Fast500 awards where again hosted voice providers did great.
Now, 10 years later, Enreach offers integrated communications and collaboration solutions (‘unified communications’) to more than 2.1 million business users with the purpose to ‘Create Contact Magic’. Through partnerships and acquisitions, Enreach has rapidly grown from a Dutch scale-up to a pan-European company, with the ambition to become a global player. The jury praises Stijn for his “unstoppable” ambition, courage and leadership. As the Dutch winner, Nijhuis also has a chance to become EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year. The international election will take place next June in Monaco.
Stijn says he is pleasantly surprised with this prestigious prize and recognition. “I feel very honoured to have been elected and to receive this award, especially looking at the other inspiring entrepreneurs and finalists, Bing Go (Go-Tan), Nils Clement (Euro Caps), Henri and Jeanette Veldsink (Veldsink Groep) and Rob Hermans (Fletcher Hotels)” he says. “My thanks go to my entire team all over Europe, who ensured we could celebrate this beautiful moment together and of course to all customers and partners of Enreach, who every day put their trust in us and challenge me to be a better entrepreneur” he adds.
Join us for the SmartCom Summit Winter 2021 to hear from Stijn about his journey so far, and the challenges and opportunities he sees ahead.
About the author
Over the past 30 years Rob (co-)founded various tech companies, including one of the leading Dutch hosted voice providers (before hosted voice became the new normal). Today, he works with telcos/CSPs and some of the world’s leading technology providers on innovation and growth, especially in the rapidly changing world of cloud communications and CPaaS. Rob has this crazy belief that the strengths of corporates and innovators should be combined in new ecosystems to create optimal customer experience, new business models and solutions for some of today’s big problems.
