Invest Sofia participates in the event, which brings together hundreds of innovators, politicians, business leaders, scientists, experts in various fields and investors from all over the world. The start was given with an official reception in the main hall of the Stockholm City Hall, the hall of the Nobel Prizes, where the head of the “Investment Analysis” department at Invest Sofia, Viktor Gusev, and Radostina Belcheva, chief expert at the Agency, met with the chairman of the city council of the Swedish capital Ole Burrell and Caroline Strand from the management of the municipal structure “Business Region Stockholm”. Among the guests at the event were ministers, members of the team of the Swedish Innovation Agency and leaders from the global technology ecosystems. Tech Arena 2024 continues until February 23, with the participation of more than 250 speakers from around the world, a technology exhibition, panel discussions and trainings. Special areas have been set aside for start-up and expanding companies, expert seminars, meetings with investors and sessions for founders are also part of the program.
Тhe new edition of the international forum for sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship “Tech Arena” will be held in the Swedish capital, Stockholm between February 21 and 23. The event brings together hundreds of innovators, politicians, business leaders, scientists, experts in various fields and investors from all over the world. The head of the “Investment Analysis” department at Invest Sofia, Viktor Gusev, and Radostina Belcheva, chief expert at the Agency, will also take part in Tech Arena 2024.
At the invitation of the Bulgarian ambassador in Stockholm, Mrs. Svetlana Stoycheva – Etropolski, they visited our embassy there and met with the ambassador and the Head of the Trade and Economic Department, Mr. Valentin Stoev. During the meeting, they discussed opportunities to promote investments in Bulgaria and in Sofia in particular.
The Bulgarian Investment Agency together with the Ministry of Innovation and Growth organized the forum “Attracting Investments and Financing – Opportunities for the municipalities”, which was attended by the CEO of Invest Sofia Dr. Maria Hristova and Kristin Dermendzhiev – Chief Expert in the “Investments and Business Development” department.
The purpose of the event was to provide information to the municipalities in an open dialogue about the attraction of investors and financing opportunities in order to ensure sustainable growth of the regions. The event was opened by Milena Stoicheva, Minister of Innovation and Growth, who presented the ministry’s program for the development of the municipalities and the regions. The executive director of the Bulgarian Investment Agency, Mila Nenova, presented the incentive measures that the state grants to support the business. Plamen Panchev, Executive Director of “Trakya Economic Zone” and Dimitar Ivanov, Mayor of Maritsa Municipality, presented the new investment projects in TEZ and the good practices in their cooperation.
The forum also presented the current opportunities for accessing grant funding and financial instruments applicable to municipalities and potential investors.
For third year in a row, the association “Ladies forum” is organizing a discussion to promote diversity and gender equality. The new edition, in partnership with Dir.bg, is called “The power of diversity: changing the stereotypes” and its special guest is the European Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dali. The CEO of Invest Sofia, Dr. Maria Hristova, also took part in the event.
The forum presents opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences aimed at improving equality and inclusion in the European society. The discussion of key topics such as the fight against stereotypes and the removal of barriers to equality are also in the center of attention in order to contribute to the real change of the business environment in our country.
To provide stable opportunities for the development of the economic environment in Sofia and to turn the city into an attractive and business-friendly city, our team strongly relies on partnerships with the local business community. Cooperation with many organizations from different industries is part of our daily work. We are glad to welcome to our contact network for business partnerships the Toncheva & Partners Law Office. At an official meeting between our organizations PhD. Maria Hristova, CEO of Invest Sofia and Attorney-at-law Yanita Toncheva, Managing Partner at the Low Office signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in attracting investments in the city.
In its 28-year history Toncheva and Partners Law Office has established itself as a desirable partner for many Bulgarian and foreign companies. Class A and Class B investment registration, corporate and company law, due diligence, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property and copyright, real estate and construction, public procurement, applicable regulatory regimes, competition and consumers protection, labor law, migration issues and employee relocations are just some of the expertise in which the Toncheva and partners team has in-depth knowledge and many years of experience in consulting clients.
Under the Agreement, our organizations will join efforts to promote, support and facilitate cooperation between business partners related to the mutual interests of both parties. The Law Office will also join Sofia IS – our city initiative with the local Sofia companies aimed at free-of-charge integrated services to investors in Sofia. Invest Sofia will rely on the expertise of Toncheva & Partners in investment inquiries for the provision of advisory services for the selection of an appropriate legal form for investment; general review of legislation in the Republic of Bulgaria; legal research of companies, etc.
The event, which was organized by our partners from the Cluster Sofia Knowledge City, was attended by Viktor Goussev – Head of the “Investment Analysis” Department at Invest Sofia and Radostina Belcheva, Chief Expert at the Agency. In 2024, the cluster launched a new initiative to achieve one of the ideal goals of the association – creating a suitable environment for cooperation in the quadrangle of knowledge (business, science, education and local government) to stimulate the development of Sofia as a city of knowledge. Ivan Goichev, the deputy mayor in the direction of “Digitalization, Innovations and Economic Development”, was invited as the first guest of the Club.
Cluster Sofia Knowledge City unites the efforts of businesses from the knowledge-intensive sectors with the municipality, scientific institutes, development, educational and financial organizations, to transform the capital into a smart city. The cluster is part of Invest Sofia’s partner network in efforts to increase investments, improve the business environment and living conditions in our city. Through its activity, the cluster supports the implementation of the Strategy for Intelligent Specialization of Sofia and the Strategy for Digital Transformation of the City for smarter and more efficient use of human and material resources.
The head of the “Investment Analysis” department at Invest Sofia – Viktor Goussev participated in the conversation which is part of the project “Guidelines for developing policies to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector through digital transformation”. The meeting was held at the request of the Korean researchers involved in the project. Their main question was about the Agency’s participation in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the digitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises in Bulgaria and how it affects the inflow of foreign direct investments, as well as public-private partnership projects related with digitalization and connectivity. Slaveya Minova from the “Digitalization, Innovations and Investments” Directorate at the Metropolitan Municipality also took part in the conversation.
Partners in the project “Guidelines for the development of policies to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector through digital transformation” on the Bulgarian side are the Ministry of Economy and Industry and Sofia Tech Park in cooperation with the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy.
The event was initiated by the Minister of Innovation and Growth – Mrs.Milena Stoicheva, and organized by the European Innovation Council. Its aim was to present the different directions of the Horizon Europe program and to explain the possibilities for supporting innovators and researchers in deep technologies. The head of the “Investment Analysis” department at Invest Sofia, Viktor Gusev, and Radostina Belcheva, chief expert at the Agency, took part in the meeting.
The European Innovation Council is the European Commission’s largest initiative to support innovation throughout the life cycle from early stage research to proof of concept, technology transfer, funding and scale-up for start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises. Through its three instruments – Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator, the Council provides funding to scientific organizations, start-ups and SMEs in the form of grants and equity participation or investments of up to €17.5 million per start-up beneficiary. The organization has a budget of 10.1 billion euros for the period 2021-2027.
BgGPT has been developed for the Bulgarian state. Users, public and private organizations can now register to test the product
The INSAIT Institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” has officially launched BgGPT – the first open, large-scale, last-generation artificial intelligence language model in Bulgarian language. The product will be freely available to Bulgarian public and private organisations. Registrations are now open for those wishing to test working with the system via a bot, API access to develop their own applications, direct access to the model for customisation, and for training on specific own or company data.
The product launch was attended by Prime Minister Acad. Nikolay Denkov, Minister of Education and Science prof. Galin Tsokov and the Rector of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” – prof. Georgi Valchev.
BgGPT is specially trained for the specifics of the Bulgarian language, which will allow the creation of applications and solutions for the benefit of Bulgarian education, business, healthcare, public administration and others, according to the official announcement of Sofia University. In its first version, the model was trained on over 3 billion sentences and consisted of 7 billion parameters.
What is different from other platforms such as ChatGPT, Bard, Bing is that BgGPT is not corporate owned and can be freely used by Bulgarian public and private organizations. It is also a strategic advantage for Bulgaria’s national security that the data used to create the model is not shared with foreign corporations.
BgGPT will be fully available on 3 March 2024 at https://bggpt.ai. Users can now request early access here. In this first phase, priority will be given to users from scientific, educational, public and business organisations. INSAIT will also hold outreach meetings and events with the tech community.
According to prof. Martin Vechev, Full Professor at ETH Zurich, Founder and Architect of INSAIT and tech entrepreneur, the AI model in Bulgarian positions our country as one of the few countries in the world that has its own GPT technology, which will be accessible to all and will be independent of large private corporations. The development of the Sofia-based scientific institute makes the clear statement that Bulgaria can be a technological leader, not just a consumer of new technologies.
The INSAIT Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology was opened in Sofia less than two years ago. It is structured as a special unit of Sofia University. It
Our partners from Manpower Bulgaria kicked off the year with an event presenting the results of their regular survey on expected changes in salaries and compensation packages for the first half of 2024. The HR Navigator data was presented in an online workshop and discussion titled “Quality of Life in Bulgaria.
The analysis comes from the seventh consecutive survey on “Salaries, benefits and fringe benefits – trends (SATR H1/2024)”, conducted by Manpower Bulgaria and Assert International Bulgaria. According to data from the survey among businesses in the country, the past year has seen stability in the processes of increasing wages and fringe benefits for employees. The next expected range of increase in fixed monthly remuneration in H1/2024 is between 9% and 11%. Nearly 50% of companies plan to increase the number of employees by mid-year. Salaries are also expected to rise in an attempt to move closer to European levels.
The focus of the event this year was not only on salaries but also on the current economic trends in the country – the changing prices and their effect on purchasing power. In the topic “Quality of life in Bulgaria: the value of money today” experts gave a different perspective on what it means to receive a given salary and what standard it would provide you today. All this was in the context of whether we are living better after the significant wage jump in the last 2 years.
At an official ceremony held today at the Sofia Balkan Palace Hotel in Sofia, the Innovative Enterprise of the Year 2023 awards were presented. The event was held as part of the national Innovation Forum “Innovation and Sustainable Growth”, organized by the Applied Research and Communications Fund and Enterprise Europe Network – Bulgaria. At the invitation of the initiators of the forum among the guests were the CEO of Invest Sofia Ph.D. Maria Hristova and Radostina Belcheva, Chief Expert at the Agency.
Bulgarian Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Iliana Ivanova and Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov were among the special guests at the National Innovation Forum, which again this year brings together representatives of the government, business and academia. Projects such as the Institute Insight, which is unique for the region, the Institute “Big Data for an Intelligent Society” (GATE) at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski, the PlanaCIST Institute in Plovdiv, which develops innovations in various fields, and the supercomputer in Sofia Tech Park, one of the scientific and applied structures that make Bulgaria unique among the neighboring countries, were among the best examples of successful Bulgarian projects at European and global level that were mentioned during the forum.
For the Innovative Enterprise of the Year 2023 Awards, 21 enterprises from different industries were shortlisted this year. All nominated and awarded companies can use the “Excellence in Innovation” brand.
The awarded companies are:
- Innovation for a better quality of life – the Sofia-based startup Algaya Ltd. with the Vodoraslo brand;
- Social Innovation – Outro Bulgaria Ltd. Biotechnology and Health Cluster Bulgaria awarded an additional prize;
- Innovation in Creative Industries – Zekeng AD;
- Digital Transformation – Giga Automa Ltd;
- Innovation Management – Lulis Mel Bulgaria EAD;
- Innovative start-up – Tsarina Winery Ltd. The Artificial Intelligence Cluster Bulgaria awarded an additional prize;
- Green Innovation – 2 companies were awarded;
In the Market Leadership category awards were given to:
- – Bizportal AD and Barin Sports AD (additional awards from Leader BG and Unified Innovation Center of BAS)
- – an additional award from Industry Info went to LogiSoft Ltd;
- – an award from PARA was given to Melexis Ltd.
The companies were judged by an independent jury of experts from government institutions, industry organizations, academia and entrepreneurs on the impact of the innovation they had created. Prizes are awarded for the introduction of a new or significantly improved product