Sofia to be the first European city where public transport on demand will be piloted. Via a mobile app, citizens will be able to book a bus that has fixed end stops, but the route will be according to the needs of the passengers. The project is implemented by the Sofia Development Association, is part of the InnoAir project, and is financed by the European initiative Urban Innovative Actions. The service is expected to become available in September. The service will be available for the Southern Sofia districts first.
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Another innovation has been already introduced in the public transport in Sofia. Following good practices from a number of European countries, an “Optional stop” has been introduced in some bus lines. Lines 1, 3, 4, 26, 27, 42, 58, 59 and 63 will not stop at all bus stops, but only at those where there are passengers waiting or for those wanting to get off and who have signaled to the driver via the STOP button. The new practice aims to increase the average speed of public transport and optimize expenses. You can check out the full list of “Optional stops” for each bus route here.
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A new outdoor space for cultural events has just opened in Sofia. This is the stage pavilion of VOX POPULI located in Knyajeska Garden. It will be open for art activities until the end of October and will offer a diverse programme. The project is implemented by “Studio for Documentary Theater VOX POPULI” with the support of Sofia Municipality and is part of the Cultural Events Calendar of Sofia in the “Open Stages” section.
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We remind you that citizens of Sofia can use the increasing number of online-delivered services of the Architecture and Urban Spatial Development Service (NAG), a permit for the development of Detailed Site Development Plans (DDP) being among them. You will need a qualified electronic signature (KEP), an installed BIS application, free and valid for all types of KEP, a user profile in the NAG portal and readiness to provide a payment document at the time of the e-application. Detailed information can be found on the official NAG website at nag.sofia.bg/Pages/Render/974.
Sofia marks a 77% increase in the number of tourists for the first half of 2022 compared to the same period of 2021, deputy mayor of the “European policies, international activity and tourism” department Irina Savina announced. According to the data by the Unified Tourism System (UTS) of the Ministry of Tourism, foreign visitors grew up to 139% while visitors from Bulgaria marked 37% of growth, compared to the first half of 2021.
The number of foreign tourists is bigger than Bulgarian tourists. Foreign visitors are returning, with the most coming from Germany, Romania, Israel, Italy, the USA and Greece. Since the beginning of 2022, there has been an increased interest in Sofia as a tourist destination for UK citizens as well.
The average length of stay is 2.3 days, while the growth of overnight stays is 86%. For the first six months of the year, foreign tourists have the leading share with 62% of overnight tourists, against 38% for visitors from other Bulgarian cities. UTS data show a positive trend compared to the same period last year, when the share of Bulgarian tourists who stayed overnight was 51%, against 49% for foreign tourists.
We invite you to participate in a short survey initiated by the Sofia Municipality, aimed at the experience of the city residents, related to access to administrative services and information from the city administration.
The questionnaire is anonymous and takes only 5 minutes.
More participants in the survey will help the city administration further optimize the processes related to the provision of administrative services and information about municipal initiatives, as well as build new approaches and more effective communication with the citizens of Sofia.
The questions are related to the most frequently used services, does the Municipality provide services and feedback in a timely manner, etc.
You can share the questionnaire with more friends or acquaintances who live in Sofia. The opinion of both natural and legal persons who develop business in the city whould be helpful.
New entrepreneurs with a startup company or business idea, as well as experienced entrepreneurs who own or manage SMEs, can now apply for access to the cross-border exchange programme “Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs”. A partner organization for Bulgaria is the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), which has already supported 8 exchanges and has the opportunity to stimulate 11 more in Bulgaria and abroad.
“Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs” offers on-the-job training in a small or medium-sized enterprise abroad with a funded stay of 1 to 6 months. Among the advantages for the participants are improving the business plan, acquiring know-how, accessing new markets and partners abroad, looking at different cultural and organizational attitudes, and doing business in another EU country.
Participating companies from Bulgaria will join the programme as a host of a new entrepreneur from another EU country and will benefit from innovative approaches, new skills and knowledge about business and foreign markets, and improved potential for company growth by establishing business contacts with partners from another European country.
To apply for Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, please submit your CV and business plan through the website of the programme: www.erasmus-entrepreneurs.eu. You need to indicate the BCCI is your intermediary organization. The platform will then allow you to connect with participants from another country and agree on the details of the exchange – dates, goals, etc.
Visteon opened a brand-new high-tech testing laboratory for automotive technologies. It is the first facility of its kind in the country in terms of automotive testing capabilities at every stage of the production cycle. The laboratory will test the safety, quality and performance of the tech products that the American company develops for leading German and French car manufacturers in its centers in Sofia, Bulgaria and Romania. This is also the only laboratory in our country where tests for electromagnetic compatibility and resistance to electromagnetic interference will be carried out. The team in Sofia will work with equipment delivered specifically for the laboratory from Germany, Austria, the USA, and Asia.
The new high-tech laboratory strengthens the role of Visteon’s development center in our country as a key unit for the company’s activities in Europe. Currently, the company in Sofia employs nearly 1,000 experts in software, hardware and mechanics. Due to the opening of the new center, the company is already recruiting more people.
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The Swedish industrial machinery manufacturer AQ Group to invest 5 million euros in an industrial plot of 22,000 square meters near Sofia with a plan to build a factory for lamina copies and electronic integration of battery energy storage systems. Within two years, the enterprise intends to invest another 2 million euros to equip its new site, SeeNews reported. In the next 12 months, the Swedish company plans to appoint about 100 employees.
AQ Group has been present in Bulgaria since 1996 and has a total of 1,500 employees in five subsidiaries in the country – Sofia, Kyustendil, Radomip, Godech, and Veliĸo Tarnovo.
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The US-based blockchain company R3 opens an R&D center in Sofia. R3 will be managed by the Sofia-based INDUSTRY, which will provide its resource and know-how of a local developer of blockchain-based solutions. The center will start operations with approximately 50 employees with plans to double their number in a year.
Visteon opened a brand-new high-tech testing laboratory for automotive technologies. It is the first facility of its kind in the country in terms of automotive testing capabilities at every stage of the production cycle. The laboratory will test the safety, quality and performance of the tech products that the American company develops for leading German and French car manufacturers in its centers in Sofia, Bulgaria and Romania. This is also the only laboratory in our country where tests for electromagnetic compatibility and resistance to electromagnetic interference will be carried out. The team in Sofia will work with equipment delivered specifically for the laboratory from Germany, Austria, the USA, and Asia.
The new high-tech laboratory strengthens the role of Visteon’s development center in our country as a key unit for the company’s activities in Europe. Currently, the company in Sofia employs nearly 1,000 experts in software, hardware and mechanics. Due to the opening of the new center, the company is already recruiting more people.
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The Swedish industrial machinery manufacturer AQ Group to invest 5 million euros in an industrial plot of 22,000 square meters near Sofia with a plan to build a factory for lamina copies and electronic integration of battery energy storage systems. Within two years, the enterprise intends to invest another 2 million euros to equip its new site, SeeNews reported. In the next 12 months, the Swedish company plans to appoint about 100 employees.
AQ Group has been present in Bulgaria since 1996 and has a total of 1,500 employees in five subsidiaries in the country – Sofia, Kyustendil, Radomip, Godech, and Veliĸo Tarnovo.
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The US-based blockchain company R3 opens an R&D center in Sofia. R3 will be managed by the Sofia-based INDUSTRY, which will provide its resource and know-how of a local developer of blockchain-based solutions. The center will start operations with approximately 50 employees with plans to double their number in a year.
Sofia and Bucharest are the most significant knowledge economy centers and together concentrate more than 44% of all outsourced operations in South Eastern Europe (SEE). Data is from the latest SEE Sourcing Industry 2022 report by the Association for Innovation, Business Services and Technology – AIBEST. A total of 598 companies operate with headquarter offices in Sofia (as of 2020), and another 42 sourcing vendors use the city as a secondary location. The outsourcing market in our country is close to 3.44 billion euros and the sector generates 5.6% of GDP= The number of people employed continues to grow and is now close to 79,000. The top foreign investor in outsourcing in our country is the United Kingdom.
Sofia, along with Bucharest, is the home to the major sourcing cities in terms of employees and suitable talent pool. The two capitals are undoubtedly recognized as the two most developed locations for technology and business services in the region. Due to their advanced stage of market development, Romania and Bulgaria are already seeing growth outside their capitals. In our country, cities with more and more companies in the outsourced services sector are Plovdiv and Varna. Sofia is also mentioned in the report as the location with competitive prices for Class A offices and the most favorable tax environment.
The annual survey covers a total of 2,015 companies from all 11 countries in the region. Outsourced service providers contributed a total of 137 million euros in corporate taxes to their countries’ budgets. The operating revenue in 2020 is EUR 10.7 billion, which is an increase of 4.9% on an annual basis. The ITO segment has a larger annual turnover – 5.7 billion euros, while BPO registered operating revenues of 5.0 billion euros. With the fastest growth rate of 6.8% in SEE is the ITO segment.
According to the overall findings, the leading segment is ITO with 1,182 companies across the region, while BPO consists of 833 companies. Shared service centers are the fastest growing sub-segment, accounting for one in four providers that have launched operations in the region since 2018. In SEE, the industry employs 250,000 people.
Nearly a third of all active sourcing providers were set up in the most dynamic period 2012-2016 alone. The trend continued afterward with 92 newly created sourcing companies since 2019. More than two-thirds of them are either Bulgarian or Romanian.
The largest number of investors
The first open call under the AMULET (Advanced Material and Manufacturing Technologies United for Lightweight) project with funding of nearly 1.3 million euros from the H2020-InnoSUP-1 programme is open for applications until July 20. The project aims to support new value chains through projects that will promote the introduction of advanced lightweight materials in four sectors: Automotive, Aerospace and aeronautics, Energy, and Building. Projects are accepted from micro-consortium of minimum 2 and maximum 3 legal entities including exclusively SMEs. The proposed solutions must be related to one of the challenges pre-defined by AMULET. Up to 36 projects will be shortlisted and invited to Jury Day to pitch their solutions. Of these, up to 26 projects will join the next stages of the programme and will receive support services until up to 7 projects complete the full program. For more information, see the website here: https://amulet-h2020.fundingbox.com/. You can also ask for assistance from the experts of EEN – Bulgaria here.
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The Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission, together with the EISMEA – European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, and the European Alliance DIGITAL SME, will create a catalog featuring innovative digital solutions of leading European enterprises and their use cases of software systems for a more sustainable industry. The initiative aims to highlight digital solutions and business models with high impact in the area of reducing dependence on oil, gas and imported raw materials, as well as increasing the resilience of global supply chains. The target group of the project are startups and SMEs that have developed innovative digital solutions in a relevant field. EU enterprises can propose their solutions for inclusion in the catalog. A special jury will select the solutions with the greatest impact, among all those proposed and included in the digital catalog, and companies will have the opportunity to present them within two seminars, as well as receive personalized consulting assistance from experts based on the specific needs of each enterprise. The application deadline is August 31. More information is available here.
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Until August 14, Bulgarian startups with a ready-made innovative product or service can apply the “Drazkite” initiative by Bloomberg TV Bulgaria. The products and services must demonstrate potential for market growth and positive impact on society and the environment. The most promising 21 companies, voted by mentors and a special jury, will participate
Four Sofia-based companies and one Bulgarian VC fund are included in the report summarizing VC Funding in CEE in 1Q 2022 by the online matchmaking platform Vestbee. The companies are SPARK Bulgaria, SessionStack, Cloudcart, and the first Bulgarian unicorn Payhawk= Among the most active VC funds is featured the fund manager of the Fund of Funds – Vitosha Venture Partners.
According to Vestbee, the biggest matchmaking platform for startups and scaleups in CEE, a total of 233 funding rounds were completed in the region from January to March this year, with Payhawk’s €89 million Series B in the Top 5 of the biggest deals. The total investment amount reaches over €1.6 billion compared to €1 billion in Q4 2021. Bulgaria ranks fourth in terms of investment volume after Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic, and in fourth place in terms of investment deals – a total of 13 within the Top 50 investments for the period under review.
The most appreciated industries for the investors were Ecommerce, Fintech, Analytics, AI, SaaS, Advertising, and Big Data.
The Bulgarian companies featured in the report
SPARK Bulgaria is a car rental agency that provides electric car-sharing services. It has received a €30 million investment from Luxembourg-based investment group GEM Global Emerging Markets. SPARK is a Lithuanian-Bulgarian company and has operations in Romania as well.
The SessionStack product is used by developers, product managers, customer service experts and UX designers and helps them find and fix problems with their product or service in less time. It allows companies with web applications to get a detailed idea of the user path, possible product quality improvements, user experience and more. At the beginning of the year, the company received an investment of 750K euros from BrightCap Ventures and angel investment.
Cloudcart launched in Sofia in 2016 to develop its All-in-One SaaS eCommerce platform to create and launch an online store in no time. Last year, the company entered the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ranking of the fastest growing technology businesses in CEE and was awarded in the Impact Stars category for successful products and services with a positive impact on society, business, innovation and the environment. Earlier this year, Cloudcart raised funds in an investment round led by Elevator Ventures, the venture capital division of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), with the participation of the existing investor in the company – NV3.
The first Bulgarian unicorn Payhawk
Until July 29, companies can submit their applications for the Best Employer Career Show Awards 2022. The organisations can choose from over 70 categories distinguishing the employer brand and successful processes in companies. Invest Sofia will once again participate in the evaluation of applications. For another year, our executive director, Dr. Maria Hristova, is part of the jury.
The fourth edition of the awards once again will highlight the best examples of employers’ care for their talents, a good working environment, and labour market development. This year, the Career Show Awards has expanded the number of categories, paying attention to more details in the organisation of the work process. Among the new categories are “Fastest developing company”, “New product development”, “Innovations in the working environment” and others. With a brand new group of categories “Management and Teams”, the organisers will focus on individuals who have personally contributed to the success of the company.
The applications to be evaluated by a prestigious jury – a team of proven professionals in various fields, and outstanding public figures known for their work and visionary thinking.
“Career Show Awards have established as a leading initiative in the field of employer branding and employee care in our country. The trust we have built in the companies is due to the transparency and attention to every detail in the internal life of the companies. We value their work and give them a platform to share more about their success and development. That is the reason for the growing trust the Career Show Awards gain.
The most successful strategies for creating a good working atmosphere not only strengthen the image of the company but also serve as an inspiration and establish new trends,” Simona Harizanova, co-founder of Career Show says.
After the announcement of the winners, all applications and evaluations of the jury become publicly available, which guarantees the transparency of the competition.
Registrations are accepted no later than July 29 on the website here: careershow.bg/awards
The U.S.-based company GlobalFoundries announced the expansion of its team in Sofia. The company is one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers in the world and operates in Bulgaria through its subsidiary “GlobalFoundris Bulgaria”. It employs about 250 developers who participate in the creation of all state-of-the-art technological processes of the company and the creation of the so-called integrated circuit design – the structural descriptions needed for the design and then for the production of the chips. GlobalFoundris delivers to mobile and portable devices manufacturers, consumer and industrial electronics producers, as well as companies from the automotive and aerospace industries, fintech, and others. The development center in Sofia is starting to expand with more experts in the field of microelectronics, physics and programming with a plan to hire a total of 100 new specialists within two years.
The Sofia-based company “Digital Condominium” and its platform “Entrance-Expert” raised 25 thousand euros of funding from Innovation Starter Accelerator. The platform has been launched in less than a year, but already serves its first clients – house managers and real-property owners. The company plans to develop a mobile app and add new services and functionalities for the users of the platform.
Sofia’s CloudCart grabbed the award for best startup of the year in the most influential technology event for young companies in Central and Eastern Europe – Rodim DH. Recently, the company entered the Top 50 CEE Funding Rounds Closed in 1Q 2022 list because of the capital attracted by Elevator Ventures and NV3 Fund, which in 2020 invested in the e-stores building platform nearly BGN 1 million. CloudCart was founded in 2016 and today has offices in Sofia and Beverly Hills, California, USA. The platform aims to provide the easiest-to-use e-commerce software, with a rich set of integrated marketing tools for more sales even to sellers with no previous experience in e-commerce.
Five companies became part of the spring cohort of the accelerator programme for entering the US market organsied by the Bulgarian Innovation Hub (BIH). Four of them are Bulgarian companies from Sofia. These are Humans in the Loop – the social startup for hiring and training people from conflict-affected regions and communities, the data storage company StorPool, the e-sports platform Augment.gg and Rush – the software for tracking shipments. The BIH accelerator provides companies with expert advice, know-how and resources for global expansion and access to investors. The
Yet another company is now part of the Sofia IS initiative launched by Invest Sofia to provide integrated free of charge services to investors in the city. This is the commercial real estate brokerage company Trinity Real Estate. The company joined the network of Sofia IS under a Memorandum of Cooperation signed at an official meeting.
Accоrding to the Agreement, Invest Sofia and Trinity Real Estate will assist each other in business meetings and initiatives in the field of real estate investment activities and will encourage the exchange of expertise and contacts that will help joint activities in investor inquiries concerning market information in the segments of office, industrial and retail segments in Sofia and Bulgaria.
Trinity Real Estate is a Bulgarian brokerage company specialising in business real estate transactions. The team provides fast and high-quality professional services to its customers by applying latest software solutions, in-depth knowledge and excellent sales and negotiation skills. The company covers transactions in the office, retail, industrial space and land market.