The new office space in Sofia completed in the first half of 2019 was about 107,000 m2, according to data from Cuѕhman & Wakefield Forton. The trend for leasing buildings still under construction continues to dominate the market.

The total built stock of class A and B space reached 1.925 million m2, and IT and BPO companies remain the most active tennants on the market. Because of their dynamic growth, they seek larger spaces or spaces to bring their units together.

In the first six months of the year, the available office space in Sofia was about 9.9%. It is expected activity on the lease market to grow over the third and fourth quarter, and the long-term forecast is for a slight increase in the available spaces, which will then lead to a reduction in asking prices.

The assessment of Сuѕhmаn & Wаkеfіеld I Fоrtоn is that the office space market in the capital has entered a mature phase with a steady demand and activity. There is a slight increase in unoccupied premises of Class B since tenants are interested in improving their working environment by migrating to Class A space.

In the second quarter of 2019, the office space under construction in Sofia 404,000 m2. According to Cushman & Wakefield Forton, 90% of these projects are located on key boulevards and in areas with good transport connections.

Rents for prime office space in Sofia were stable in the first quarter – EUR 15/m2 for central business districts (CBD) and EUR 13-14 / m2 for non-CBD areas. Prime office yields remained stable at 7.5-8% in the first half of 2019.

You can find all data about the first half of the year of Сuѕhmаn & Wаkеfіеld I Fоrtоn here.

IOT BULGARIA SUMMIT 2019

IoT Bulgaria Summit 2019 is a community event that will take place on Saturday, September 14, 2019 for the fourth time in Bulgaria.

It is one day event focused only on Internet of Things. The conference will be hosted at the Microsoft Innovation Center.

Stay in touch with the latest news at IoT Bulgaria Summit 2019.

SECURIT: INFOSEC & DATA STORAGE

The conference SECURIT: InfoSec & Data Storage will gather IT managers and experts from all segments of the economy: Directors and Information Security managers; Risk Management managers; Infrastructure managers; System architects; Security engineers; IT managers; IT auditors; Information security auditors; Consultants.

This is the 18th edition of the event, organised by  ICT Media and ISACA Sofia Chapter.

BIOTECH ATELIER 2.0

Prescriptia and the Bulgarian Association for Personalized Medicine (BAPEMED) organise for a second consecutive year the high-profile event Biotech Atelier. The event will bring together leading international experts, entrepreneurs, business leaders, visionaries, and investors in the field of value-based healthcare, intellectual property, biotech entrepreneurship, business leadership and many more. 

Sofia Investment Agency is pleased to announce that CEO Mr. Vladimir Danailov was invited to speak at BIOTECH ATELIER. Mr Danailov will join the panel discussion “Access to Funding for Startups and Mature BioTech Companies in Bulgaria”.  

Each panel of Biotech Atelier 2.0 will be organized as an open discussion between the audience and several speakers on the stage on topics such as Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs), AI in Medicine, Biobanking, Personalized Medicine, Active Patient Involvement, Funding Opportunities, IT and Life Sciences, Gene Therapies and implementation in difficult markets and much more. 

In addition to the main event, this year there will also be training & workshop pre-event, focused on ‘Intellectual Property&Technology Transfer’. The pre-event is a result of a collaboration between Biotech Atelier, the British Embassy in Sofia and the UK Science&Innovation Network in Bulgaria. It will be held on Tuesday, 24 September 2019.

Speakers list, full agenda and tickets: biotech-atelier.com

FORUM SECURITY WITH AUSTRIAN COMPANIES

The Commercial Department at the Austrian Embassy in Sofia, supported by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Economy, organizes a Bulgarian-Austrian Industrial Day for companies looking for partnerships in the Security and Cybersecurity sectors.

An Austrian delegation of 11 companies will visit Bulgaria and present their products and know-how. You can find the list of the Austrian companies here

For a second year in a row, Sofia Municipality’s Green Sofia and Cleantech Bulgaria launched their electric bike rental service. This year the locations are two: the parking lot of the swimming pool in Dianabad and the parking area behind the National History Museum in Boyana. The service will be provided by the end of October by the companies Eljoy Bikes and Eldrive. Partners also include E-Mountain Bike, which provides a new generation of mountain electric bikes for those who wish to ride in Vitosha with a mountain bike. 

A bicycle can be booked via call at 0885151928 or on the website rentebike.bg.

***

More than 200 new parking spaces for bicycles, mopeds and scooters are being set up in downtown Sofia. Most places are in the Blue and Green areas for paid parking. In the autumn, spaces in pedestrian areas are planned, and later within the residential areas.

The initiative aims to improve bicycle infrastructure and promote micro-mobility. The parking spaces are free of charge and will be featured in the Lime app. In August, the company launched the first private sharing service for electric scooters with a fleet of 150 e-scooters. Several more Bulgarian and foreign companies are expected to start offering the same service in Sofia.

***

The Sofia City Council approved the development of a Detailed Development Plan for the construction of a new neighbourhood west of Gorublyane. 

According to the project, the new neighbourhood will be 143 ha in size. It will be border Sofia Ring Road to the south, Iztochen Park to the west, boulevard Copenhagen to the north and Gorublyane to the east.  

The plan includes construction of small-scale housing, multifunctional and manufacturing zones, landscaped areas.

***

Unique archaeological findings, part of the fortress walls of ancient Serdika were discovered in a private property in the centre of Sofia on Exarch Yosif St.,  a few metres from the mineral water fountains. 

According to archaeologists, the finds are of exceptional value. They are part of the second fortress wall of ancient Serdica. Many coins were found, as well as two incomparable artefacts – a figure of the god Eros with a torch and a round vessel with a large handle ending with a pig’s head. The finds are dated to the end of the second – the beginning of the third century.

CEEC launches operations, representing 11 EU Member States from Central and Eastern Europe in Singapore

The Central and Eastern European Chamber of Commerce (Singapore) – CEEC officially launched operations and is now open to membership applications. The project initiated by EuroCham over a year agoр aims to create a platform in Singapore for companies and individuals to connect, network, develop and strengthen common business interests and opportunities between each other, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Singapore, and Southeast Asia.

A Strong Start with an Experienced Team
The Board of CEEC already includes members from Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Singapore. The full list of the members of the Board can be found here. The Chamber will welcome more additions soon in order to represent the entire Central and Eastern European region. “We are extremely excited to begin this chapter. The countries from Central and Eastern Europe were critically underrepresented in Singapore and we hope that CEEC (Singapore) can change this dramatically for the better”, said the first elected President Mr. Martin Angelov, who will remain on the Board of EuroCham Singapore, representing CEEC.
Kristina Anguelova, formerly EuroCham’s CEEC Project Manager has been appointed as Executive Director of the Chamber. “Kristina has tremendous knowledge and experience concerning all relevant stakeholders and the ecosystem, she headed the project for the European Chamber of Commerce and has contributed immensely to the creation of the Chamber. It was a natural progression “ said Mr Angelov.

CEEC (Singapore)

The Central and Eastern European Chamber of Commerce (CEEC) is a non-profit and non-governmental organization registered with the Registry of Societies (ROS) in Singapore with the vision to strengthen the relationship between Central and Eastern Europe and Singapore. “From the total of the 11 EU Member States from Central and Eastern Europe (as classified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)), there are only 3 embassies and only 4 trade offices in Singapore. For a long time there has been a need to create a dedicated structure. CEEC’s undertaking will be to assist the underrepresented countries and to enhance awareness between the two regions.” says Kristina. “Furthermore, the recently signed and ratified EUSFTA will also play an important role in CEEC’s mission. There are many opportunities for Singapore companies and investors in CEE.” added Mr. Angelov.
In 2019 the Chamber plans on facilitating various business, industry and social events to encourage cross-cultural relations between

Sofia Investment Agency and a delegation of 12+ creative companies from Sofia will head to Vienna for a series of business meetings in the framework of the ‘25 Hours in Creative Vienna’ event to take part on September 25th and 26th. We are organising the initiative together with Vienna Business Agency with the aim to facilitate the internationalisation and expansion of Bulgarian creative companies through partnerships in Austria and other German-speaking markets.

The ‘25 Hours in Creative Vienna’ delegation will include participants from Sofia-based companies active in gaming, film and video production, and culture and technology (CulTech). So far, twelve companies have confirmed their participation in the delegation. The schedule includes meetings with the Culture Department of the City of Vienna, the Vienna Film Commission, the Austrian Business Agency, the Vienna Business Agency, as well as visits to Austrian companies that focus on game development, design and animation. The full program of the event can be found here. 

A special panel in the program will be dedicated to the presentation of sector data from Sofia and presentations of the successful projects of Sofia-based companies. 

We are organising the event in collaboration with the Vienna Business Agency under the ‘City-to-City’ agreement, signed in 2018, which aims to facilitate and promote business cooperation between the two capitals. The delegation’s visit to Vienna is a continuation of the Create&Grow initiative, organised by Sofia Investment Agency and Vienna Business Agency this February in Sofia with the participation of 65 local companies active in film production, video game development, animation, fashion, design, architecture and marketing for the creative sector. At that time, Sofia’s business community and our partners from Vienna expressed their interest in organising a follow-up event, which would connect Sofia-based companies with Austrian partners and promote long-term cooperation in the field.

The creative sector is a priority area for both Sofia and Vienna. The importance of creative activities for economies is increasing globally. Their contribution to local economies is growing, also as part of the process of creating high-tech value-added products. The share of employees in creative companies in Sofia is between 5% and 8% (above the EU average). Creative activities make up 6% of Sofia’s economy (close to the contribution of other priority sectors such as manufacturing and outsourcing, at 10% each).

We hope that the meetings in Vienna will support the growth and internationalisation of this sector, which

The StorPool software has been developed entirely by the Bulgarian team of the company and is arguably the fastest and most reliable software-defined storage solution on the market today.

StorPool Storage: How Distributed Storage Should Be!

StorPool is recognized as the fastest block storage software for building and managing powerful public and private clouds. StorPool systems are incredibly fast, starting from 1,000,000 IOPS and <0,2 latency. The Sofia-based company provides a software-defined storage solution for demanding customers, where low latency, high IOPS, online scalability and high availability are important.

The mission of the company is to make storage simpler and more affordable by delivering the best software-defined storage system for entreprises building Clouds.

The block-level, distributed storage software was designed by the Bulgarian team from the ground up and is arguably the fastest and most reliable software-defined storage solution on the market today.

StorPool Storage aims at helping cloud builders to build simpler, smarter, more efficient clouds, at much lower costs and boost their margins. The company delivers on its mission by developing the fastest and most efficient distributed storage software and making it available on a global scale.

Boyan Ivanov, CEO at StorPool Storage, tells us what makes Sofia a place to launch a successful business and develop locally solutions with global application.

Please tell us briefly about your investments in Sofia? What does your company do in Bulgaria and outside? 

StorPool is a software vendor. We develop software for companies, which build so called public and private clouds – hosting companies, telecoms, enterprises. We help these companies to speed up their business and increase the cost-effectiveness and reliability of their infrastructure. Our customers are spread around the world.

However, most of the product development is carried out in Sofia. Subsequently, we are one of the active participants in the local IT ecosystem.

What motivated you to invest in Sofia?

As said above, StorPool’s development center is in Sofia. A big motivator for investing here is the quality of the experts and the number of skilled developers which are available here. 

StorPool not only provides high-quality products and services but develops and invents them here. Tell us more about the solutions that the Sofia-based team develops locally? 

StorPool works in a very specific sector – IT infrastructure for other businesses, which have a lot of data. We develop a data storage solution, which we

On behalf of the organising team, we would like to invite companies from Sofia, working in the automotive and ICT sectors to take part in the free live webinar India Market Potential by Crescendo Worldwide.

India Market Potential for Automotive & ICT Sectors

Friday, July 12, 2019 

14:00 Sofia time

The intensive 60-minute webinar will cover the following topics:

✓ Indian Market Potential for Automotive and ICT sectors & products.

✓ Statistics & Volumes – Import Export & consumption of the Indian Market.

✓ Market practices – Distribution System – Demand Rate

✓ Scope for Foreign companies in India

✓ Strategies for Penetrating the Indian Market

If interested, fill in the signup form to get your link for attending the webinar.

About Crescendo Worldwide

Crescendo WorldWide is an International Trade & FDI Generating Organisation with a team of 80 experts in India and Germany, with a presence in 22+ countries. The company ains at supporting international growth and development of Small, Medium & Large companies in the following sectors: Manufacturing, Engineering, Automotive, Aerospace, IT, ICT, Food, Pharma, Biotech, Life science, Chemical, Defence, Railways, Smart cities, Education, Travel & Tourism, Fintech, Textiles, Construction, Electronics & Electrical, Media & Entertainment, Mining, Oil & gas, Port & Shipping, Renewable energy, Wellness & Hospitality etc.

Areas of expertise: 

– Foreign Direct Investment ( Inward & Outward FDI )

– Joint Ventures, Collaboration, Alliances 

– Improving Trade Relations between Countries

– Business & Trade Development

– Mergers & Acquisitions

– Forming Worldwide Business Distribution Network & Channel Partners

– Worldwide Exhibition Support for B2B program

– Subsidiary formation and establishment in various parts of the World

– Make in India – Outsourcing from India

Website: crescendoworldwide.org

LinkedIn: crescendo-worldwide

On behalf of the Central and Eastern European Chamber of Commerce Singapore (CEEC), we would like to invite the FinTech companies and experts from Sofia and Bulgaria to join the Singapore Fintech Festival 2019. This is the biggest fintech festival in the world and an event all fintech companies should attend. 

Date: 11th – 15th November 2019

Location: Singapore

Through the festival companies and individuals can:

– have an exhibition booth, join as delegates;

– join the Global Fintech Hackcelerator;

– take part in Deal Friday (a matchmaking platform prior to the festival);

– participate in the Fintech Awards.

Join the Central and Eastern European community of fintech companies during the festival where CEEC will:

– be hosting a special welcome and intro cocktail before the festival;

– arrange meetings with relevant organisations, including Singapore government;

– handle all necessary arrangements regarding SFF 2019 registration;

– attend workshops on how to do business in Asia;

– host a sub-event of the festival, dedicated to CEE fintechs and the CEE ecosystem for better knowledge and exposure of our region.

As a chamber and non-profit organisation with an established network, CEEC may also help with securing preferential rates for hotels, flight tickets and other logistics if needed. 

Please reach out directly to Kristina Anguelova, Project Manager at EuroCham Singapore: kristina.anguelova@ceec.org.sg with any inquiries. 

—

CEEC is a non-profit organisation in Singapore that promotes business, trade, investment, services, finance, industry, economic and commercial interests between CEE and Singapore; as well as assists Singaporean business interests in CEE.

With an investment of 10 million euro, the Anglo-American School (AAS) in Sofia opened Rila Renaissance Centre – its new centre of Arts. The building will be dedicated to visual and scenic arts in AAS which currently educates more than 500 students from 45 countries are being taught.

In an area of 6500 sq.m. there is a multifunctional hall for Arts classes, performances, and conferences with 344 seats, control booths and technical rooms, well-equipped rooms for music, digital arts and video production, workshop area for decors, a hall for robotics, rooms for multimedia training, and more.

The Anglo-American School in Sofia is an independent international school with an educational program for students from all nationalities from kindergarten to 12th grade. The school was founded in 1967 and is governed by a School Board of Directors, appointed by the US and British Ambassadors in Bulgaria. The school campus is situated near Vitosha Mountain and, in addition to the educational buildings, it has two indoor sports playgrounds, 3 outdoor sports fields, a lake, and a park.

In June, the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) conducted an Informational Day to present the European network of research and innovation centres and hubs – ENRICH. The network is created and governed by the Regional centre for information and scientific development (RCISD), Budapest.

ENRICH encourages and facilitates the cooperation in the fields of scientific research, technologies and entrepreneurship between the members of the EU and the USA, Brazil, and China. It supports the creation of innovations and their commercialisation.

Find the presentations from the Informational Day at the links here. The programmes offered by the network on the markets of the USA, Brazil and China are accessible here.

***

Small and medium-sized enterprises can apply for funding and methodological help of up to 100 000 euro provided by TETRAMAX project. The grants are for companies that develop digital technologies and services, already have international partners and are looking for Technology Transfer opportunities. The entire budget of the project is 7 million euro. The Bulgarian partner of the project is AMG Technology Ltd.

In order to apply for funding in the upcoming open sessions, companies need to have at least one partner from outside of Bulgaria with the status of a scientific organisation, a university or SME. Companies that wish to apply for grants, have to choose the grant scheme that best corresponds to their particular business needs and to submit a project proposal in English.

More information is available at the site of the Ministry of Economy or you can contact directly the project partner for Bulgaria at vs@amg-t.com

***

The Investments Council at the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry invites Bulgarian companies to send information for investments projects which the Chamber will present during the investment seminar in Milan, on October 10, 2019. The seminar will be attended by Italian investors, funds, banks, companies, asset management companies, and financial consultants.

The Bulgarian projects should include a summary in English, a justification of the project, the size of the required investment (share capital and/or debt), offered business share, financial forecasts, markets, necessary resources for project development (human, material, market, financial), ROI, contact information.

All of the information could be sent by email at g.dimitrova@bcci.bg, tomov@intrac-investment.com

For additional information, please, contact Ms Gabriela DImitrova, Chairwoman of The Investments Council at the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, phone number 02

The shared electric vehicles company SPARK expanded its vehicle fleet with 26 new e-cars Hyundai Kona and another 120 are expected until the end of the year. The expansion of pick up and return locations for e-cars in Sofia continues. In June, the Kambanite Business Center was added to the list. The parking spots of SPARK in the newly added area are labelled by specific signs at the parking of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Bulgaria.

***

The park around the lake in Druzhba neighborhood will be renovated with amphitheatre seating seats with lake view, dog playground and sporting spaces. The investment is provided by Sofia Municipality and it will be around BGN 1.2 million.

For the construction of the amphitheatrical benches, the natural slope of the ground on the west side of the lake will be used. The reconstruction plan includes also an area for social events as well as additional kids playgrounds.

***

The former National Palace fo Culture’s thermal power plant will become a Center for Arts and Culture. The budget for turning the building into an Art Center will be BGN 3.5 million and it shall follow an investment project examined by an internationally renowned jury. The due date for submission of the documents for the project contractor is July 8th. The construction works of the center itself must take place within 300 days. 

***

22 air pollution sensors will be installed in the autumn in Sofia, the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova announced. A team of experts will determine locations where the devices will be placed. The purpose of the sensors is to cover areas where there are conditions for concentration of fine dust particles in the air.

***

A technical project for Detailed development plan for campuses on the territory of Studentski grad is currently under development. The plan will include preservation of 220 acres green areas including one in the National Academy of Sports yard as well as the establishment of more than 10 campuses.

The first campus project has been implemented with the participation of the Ministry of Education and Science and the universities. The plan includes 27 acres area around the dormitories of the University of Mining and Geology and the Technical University of Sofia. The project includes alleys, green zones and parking spots.