Kristina Tsvetanova is among the twelve outstanding women entrepreneurs nominated for the EU Prize for Women Innovators 2017.

Kristina is the co-inventor of the award-winning innovation BLITAB® – the first tactile tablet for blind and visually Impaired people. She is the co-founder and CEO of BLITAB Technology GmbH – the World’s Most Creative Start-up for 2015 and the European Winner of Social Entrepreneurship and Disability. Thanks to the international recognition that she received in Europe, USA, Mexico, Singapore, China and Japan in the last two years, and her persistent eagerness in empowering unprivileged children via technology, she was named as one of the “Social Movers” of today by Agora+D in 2015. Watch her interview for the nominations.

The Women Innovators 2017 shortlist contains women entrepreneurs who have brought their breakthrough ideas to the market. For the first time, this year’s contest includes three finalists in a new category, the Rising Innovator, to recognise excellence in female entrepreneurs aged 30 or under. All of the finalists have founded or co-founded a successful company based on their innovative ideas.

The Award ceremony will be held on March 8, 2017 at 18.30 at the European Parliament. We hope that Kristina will become one of the three honoured entrepreneurs for her outstanding innovation.

The office of Paysafe Bulgaria was ranked 7th among the 25 most popular offices in the world for 2016. The global ranking was made by Office Snapshots, the leading website for office culture and office design, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.

Among the top listed offices were also Dropbox (Austin, Texas) – ranked 8th, Red Bull (Stockholm, Sweden) – ranked 9th, and Google (Cambridge, Massachusetts) – ranked 11th. Paysafe Sofia at number 7 was the only location in Eastern Europe to be included in the Top 10.

The interior design of Paysafe’s office is by Bulgarian design and architecture studio Cachè Atelier. Photos from Cachè Atelier´s work on the Paysafe workspace can be seen on the company website.

Paysafe Bulgaria moved into its new offices in Sofia at the end of 2015. The Bulgarian division is the Global Operations center of Paysafe Group for IT services and infrastructure, risk management, and customer service. Currently, the Sofia-based team consists of  over 800 people in an office space on ​​five floors in Capital Fort – one of the most modern office buildings in Sofia.

*Photograpfer of Paysafe office for Office Snapshots – Minko Minev

We are proud to  announce that the V-Ray software for 3D visualizations developed by the Bulgarian  Chaos Group won one of this year’s 18 Oscars for scientific and technical achievements in cinema.

The award went to Vladimir Koylazov, co-founder of Chaos Group for original concept, design and implementation of V-Ray.

V-Ray is a commercial rendering plug-in for 3D computer graphics software applications and is used in media, entertainment, and design industries such as film and video game production. It transforms computer model into a photorealistic 3D image. “V-Ray’s efficient production-ready approach to ray-tracing and global illumination, its support for a wide variety of workflows, and its broad industry acceptance were instrumental in the widespread adoption of fully ray-traced rendering for motion pictures” said the Academy.

Unlike the other Academy Awards, Scientific and Technical Awards aren’t granted for work developed in the past year—instead, they take into account the overall contribution of particular technology to the process of making movies. 2016 has been a monumental year for Chaos Group in film, with V-Ray rendering incredible imagery for movies such as “Doctor Strange,” “Captain America: Civil War,” and “Deadpool.”

Vladimir Koylazov collectеd his award at the Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation on Saturday, February 11th, 2017 at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills.

This year Bulgaria is  hoping for one more prestigious statuette – for the animated short film Blind Vaysha, directed by Theodore Ushev and based on a story by the renowned Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. The film looks at the world through the eyes of the blind Vaysha who can see into the past with her left eye and into the future with her right one. The film is produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The music is by the Bulgarian musician – Kottarashky.

The 89th Oscars will be handed out on February 26th in Los Angeles.

Seven talented young Bulgarian entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders were included in the 2017 European edition of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the categories of Manufacturing and Industry, Social Entrepreneurs, and Arts and Style.

Alexander Naydenov, 26, Social Entrepreneurship

Alexander is the co-founder of PaperHive – an online coworking hub that serves as a resource for scholars and scientists to collaborate while reading complex texts, and to generate ideas for scientific research. In 2015 the German fund Exist that supports academic start-ups invested in PaperHive. One year later, the company announced that it will partner with one of the largest publishers of scientific, technical and medical literature – Elsevier.

Iliyan Dimov – 29, Emiliyan Kadiyski – 29, and Teodor Kostadinov – 23, Social Entrepreneurship

Iliyan, Emiliyan and Teodor are the co-founders of Vratsa Software Community. Their organization provides free technical education and offers 9-month programming courses. Previously they’ve won the Reach for Change social entrepreneurship competition and a Google RISE award.

Rossi Mitova – 29, Social Entrepreneurship

She created Farmhopping – an online marketplace for small family eco-farms to sell their products directly to customers. By eliminating the middleman, Mitova enables the farmers to offer their products at lower prices while increasing profit margins, Forbes said. In 2014 the company joined one of the biggest accelerator programs in Europe – Seedcamp.  

Konstantin Rangelov – 25, Manufacturing and Industry

He is one of the cofounders of Dronamics, a company developing car-sized aerial drones for cargo. Dronamics cargo drones can carry up to 350 kg at a distance of over 2,500 km. In 2015, Konstantin and his brother Petar won one of Europe’s largest startup competition – Pioneers Festival Challenge.

Kiko Kostadinov – 27, Arts and Style

Kiko is the creative director of Mackintosh 0001. He unveiled his first collection in 2016 and is expected to show his Mackintosh 0001 capsule collection at the Paris Fashion Week in 2017.

Bulgarian yogurt Trimona was ranked Best product in the US for 2016 by the readers of the American magazine Diary Foods. Trimona is produced by Atanas Vulev from Plovdiv. He won the votes of more than 7 000 respondents. Readers voted for the Top Ten among the 30 products offered by the editors of the magazine. The competition is very popular in the US as it encourages local production.

Trimona is an organic product made entirely from milk and is GMO-free, gluten-free and sugar-free, says Dairy Foods. The milk used for the production of the yogurt is American, but Trimona uses the Bulgarian ferment lactobacillus bulgaricus. First identified in 1905 by the Bulgarian doctor Stamen Grigorov, the ferment feeds on lactose to produce lactic acid, which is used to preserve milk and to produce yogurt.

This is not the first time Trimona receives recognitions. In 2014 it reached the finals of the prestigious competition “Made in America”, organized by the famous US TV host Martha Stewart.

The unique lactobacillus bulgaricus is used in the production of the traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Like the yeast used for bread dough, it can be transported in a container and to be used in milk production in different countries. The uniqueness of Trimona hides in the perfect selection and balance of the right combination of Lactobacillus strains.

Wine Enthusiast rated Bulgaria’s Thracian Valley as the second best wine destination in the world for 2017 right after Argentina. The American magazine describes the region as one of the oldest winemaking regions in the world where wine has been made for over 7 000 years and where archaeological wonders combine with modern wines in a travel fantasyland.

The list of recommended wineries includes Dragomir Winery Estate, Minkov Brothers Wine Cellar, Chateau Assena, Angel’s Estate, Edoardo Miroglio Winery.

Excellent wines are produced from indigenous varieties such as Mavrud and international grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah or Merlot. Wines are also made from Rubin, while white wines are produced from native Misket and Dimyat as well as more familiar Chardonnay and Viognier.

About 7000 foreign tourists come to Bulgaria for a wine week tour each year. Most visitors come from the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia and Scandinavia. Bulgaria has 143 wineries and more than 50 chateaux as well as plenty of charming places to stay and dine. A wine week will cost you around 350 to 740 Eur. Best destinations are the cities of Melnik, Sandanski, Plovdiv, Pazardzik. Haskovo, Vidin and Russe. 136,596 litres of wine have been produced in 2015 in 204 wine producing companies. In 2016 the country’s wine export reached 22M litres and 23M Euro. 

So pack your bags and explore the best places to stay and wine in Bulgaria.

Space is closer than you think!

A talented team of young Bulgarians stands behind Space Challenges – the biggest free Educational Program in the field of space science and exponential technologies in Europe. The curriculum includes Astrophysics, Astronomy, Biotechnology, AI & Robotics, Medicine & Neuroscience, Aerospace engineering, Space systems & Mission design, Nanotechnology, Planetary sciences and more. The program is developed in partnership with “America for Bulgaria” Foundation and the Trust partner “Telenor Bulgaria”. The initiative is supported by leading experts from NASA, ESA, Caltech, MIT, Stuttgart University, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Stanford University, The University of Oxford and many others.

The founder of Space Challenges, Raycho Raychev is 33 years old. He is the first Bulgarian in the technology program “Singularity University” at NASA Ames Research Center. Previously, he worked at the Space Research and Technology Institute and the Brazilian space program. By 2015 he was the exclusive representative of Bulgaria in the Space Advisory Council of the United Nations.

Space Challenges, started seven years ago and is now a free-access platform for young people aged 18 to 28, with background in mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and the humanities.

A separate module of the platform is dedicated to free online learning courses – Spaceport. All educational and training materials are freely accessible and share the knowledge of dozens of leading experts. Currently, the platform offers 350 video courses or 120 hours of science from nearly 100 of the world’s leading experts in space exploration – representatives of NASA, the European Space Agency, Russian and Japanese space programs, leading universities participating in the mission MARS 500, even businesspeople. All courses are offered in Bulgarian and English, and each module ends up with a test. So far 400 students have completed the training courses at Spaceport.

Another part of the program is open for volunteer teams, working together on the so-called “Space Challenges”. Team members, called “space cadets” can experiment together and work on technology innovations. You can find more information about some of the projects here: https://www.spaceedu.net/space-challenges-projects/. According to the founders of the platform, no great technological product was created without a scientific and engineering collaboration and the Space platform encourages young and talented professionals to experiment and innovate through collaboration.

The seventh annual Amway Global Entrepreneurship Report (AGER) measures the public pulse of entrepreneurship. The 2016 study finds 77% of respondents have a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship. This consistently high interest in self-employment may explain the increasing importance of global trends like the gig economy – also known as the sharing economy, on-demand economy, peer-to-peer economy, freelance nation, etc. By any name, the trend of individuals seeking to work independent from an employer with greater flexibility is on the rise. The AGER results support this trend, with 39% of respondents worldwide seeing self-employment more likely in five years than today and 56% feeling comfortable searching for and acquiring customers – a key element of self-employment. These results seem to be indicators of a changing world of work.

In Europe entrepreneurship comes from European Millennials, defined as respondents aged under 35 years. They were more inclined to start a business by showing a higher AESI score (52 points) than those respondents over 50 years (38 points) and showed a much stronger desire (61 percent) to becoming self-employed than any other age group. However, respondents aged 35 to 49 years were the most confident in having the necessary resources and skills for this step (46 percent).

Affirming the results of the previous surveys, 74 percent of respondents in the EU were positive about entrepreneurship. Men show a slightly more positive attitude (76 percent) than women (73 percent). Asked about the two most compelling factors for starting a business, Europeans were convinced of “independence from an employer, being my own boss” (49 percent) and “self-fulfillment, possibility to realize own ideas” (44 percent). “Second income prospects” remain third (37 percent). Among all age groups, respondents under 35 years held the strongest belief in “independence” at 55 percent. These reasons to start a business remain the same as in the last surveys.

In Bulgaria 59% show positive attitude towards entrepreneurship (Global average 77%) and 24% entrepreneurial potential (respondents who can imagine starting a business). The most appealing aspect of starting own business is the “Independence from an employer, being my own boss” – 31% of the respondents. 28% state as a main incentive “Second income prospects” and 24% – “Self-fulfillment; possibility to realize own ideas”.

AGER questioned 50 861 women and men aged 14–99 in 45 countries. For more information about the survey visit Amway´s Global News Section.

Moderately optimistic expectations for the development of the economy in 2017, economic growth close to the levels of 2016, but also a certain degree of caution – these are the forecasts of Bulgarian companies expressed in the qualitative survey of business expectations in Europe “EUROCHAMBRES Economic Survey 2017” (EES 2017). EES2017 is conducted for the 24th year in a row, based on the responses from 50 500 European businesses  from 25 European countries.

In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) conducts the survey for the 18th year. This year, the survey was conducted among 489 companies, members of BCCI, most of which sale their products internationally (81%).

Bulgaria ranks 6th among the EU member-states with regard to the optimistic expectations for the business climate. The smallest shares of positive expectations are reported with regard to employment and investment. The results of the survey show very good employment results in 2016, but slightly less positive forecasts for its growth in 2017. Fifty eight percent (58%) of the surveyed companies expect that industrial production will remain unchanged in 2017, while 12% expect a decrease in investment and 30% expect growth. Twenty four percent (24%) of the surveyed managers expect that slow domestic demand will be one of the most serious challenges for them in 2017.

Domestic demand seems to be one of the biggest challenges in 2017 for all countries in the EU area, shows the report. In summary, the 2017 survey results  maintain the trend from the previous several years for moderate growth expectations by Europe’s business community.  Business confidence for 2017 falls slightly compared to 2016.  Conversely, expectations for domestic sales, export sales and investment for 2017 improve with respect to 2016. The 2017 employment indicator remains almost the same as the previous year’s. Apart from domestic demand, European companies identify economic policy conditions, labour costs and a lack of skilled workers as the main challenges for 2017.

The difficult international situation, with the slowdown of the Chinese economy and the economies of other commodity exporting countries such as Brazil, the complex political relations with Russia, Brexit, the refugee crisis, combined with the slow pace of the European economic recovery, have dented the confidence and caused it to fall for a second year in a row.

Export forecasts for 2017 show a significant rise, building on last year’s slight improvement. In terms of investments, the

Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba explores the opportunity to invest in a logistics center in Bulgaria to service orders from Europe, the Bulgarian government annunced last month.

Alibaba also plans to start offering Bulgarian food and commodities through its online platform.

Alibaba Group’s businesses includes core commerce, digital media, entertainment, cloud computing and innovation initiatives.

Two more Chinese companies have expressed investment intentions. GS Solar Company is considering to build a solar panels factory and Polygroup is interested in buying Bulgarian tobacco.

The meetings were part of China’s plans to expand its presence in Central and Eastern Europe as part of its strategy “One Belt, One Road”. Its aim is to establish new markets for exports from Asia to Europe.

The regular monthly poll by Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute (NSI) has found that the country’s business climate improved slightly in January, 2017 in comparison to the previous month. The total business climate indicator increased by 0.8 percentage point in comparison to December 2016, mainly due to the improved business climate in the industry and the service sectors.

The “business climate in industry” composed indicator increased to 0.9 percentage point compared to the previous month. This is mainly due to optimism about the business situation of the enterprises over the next six months. The composite indicator “business climate in construction” fell by 1.2 percentage point because of a shifting in the construction entrepreneurs’ assessments of the present business situation from “good” to “satisfactory”, which is considered normal for the winter season.

The average capacity utilization in industry remained at its October 2016 level at 74.6%. Capacity shortages are expected with the rise in production over the next few months.

The selling prices in industry are expected to remain at the same level over the next three months. In this sector, managers saw the uncertain economic environment and increased competition in the sector as the most serious negative factors, together with weather concerns.

At the end of 2016 Bulgarian Institute for Market Economics prepared an “Economy and Investment Profile of Sofia” report for Sofia Investment Agency.

According to the report Sofia is the biggest district economy in Bulgaria. About 39% of the country’s GDP is produced here. Sofia also attracts about half of the total foreign investment in the country. According to recent data, about 49% of fixed asset expenses and about 54% of foreign direct investments were made in  Sofia.

The service sector accounts for the biggest portion of the municipal economy and it is not a surprise that most of the investments were made in that sector. Among the most attractive sectors for foreign investment in the capital were also the “industry and utilities” sector, real estate, IT and outsourcing.

Apart from attracting economically active people from other regions, Sofia is also characterized by the concentration of highly qualified population. While in Bulgaria the average proportion of university graduates is 28%, in Sofia it is almost double at 50%.

Sofia offers a relatively good infrastructure connectivity. It is one of the main railway hubs in the country. It is a part of three European transport corridors and the starting point of several motorways that connect the capital with the Black Sea coast and the national borders with Turkey, Greece and Serbia.

Sofia offers a relatively good infrastructure connectivity. It is one of the main railway hubs in the country. It is a part of three European transport corridors and the starting point of several motorways that connect the capital with the Black Sea coast and the national borders with Turkey, Greece and Serbia.

According to the report, the city will continue to attract a growing share of the country’s economic activity.

The growth will be attributed to the positive demographic trends and Sofia’s leadership position in the fastest growing economic sectors. The highly qualified workforce in Sofia will keep attracting investment to the rapidly growing IT industry, the business services sector, plus high-value added industrial activities. The growth will also be aided by the  suitable IT infrastructure, the highly educated workforce and fast speed internet.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of Sofia was about 39% of the national GDP. Sofia’s economy is dominated by the service sector which accounted for 85.9% of the district’s GDP. The industrial sector contributed another 13.9% and agriculture had a symbolic share of 0.2%. Professional activities