After spending $120 million (¥13 billion) on a stake in an online grocer in Norway, SoftBank Group Corp. has been laying out the business logic of targeting a market that boasts Europe’s highest hourly labor costs.
The deal is an example of how countries that pay average workers really well often come up with some of the smartest technology, according to Paul Davison, director at SoftBank Investment Advisers.
Norway’s biggest online grocery business, Oda, operates "in a high-labor-cost market, and grocery is a low-margin category,” Davison said in a recent interview. Because of that combination, the company "has had to build real automation capabilities and fulfillment efficiency into everything they do from day one.”