Brightive, formally known as EHS Consulting is a project management/business analysis consulting company. In the beginning, EHS provided PMO (project management office) and BA (business analysis) services in the healthcare sector in the UK. Afterwards the company applied its knowledge and “know-how” in government, financial and utility sectors. Realising that its capabilities are moving beyond these industries, the company has re-branded to further strengthen its market positioning. Since the establishment of its Bulgarian operations in 2013, the company has doubled in size every year and plans to employ over 120 people in 2020. It uses its Sofia-based professional services center to handle its most complex projects. Some of their clients include Alcatel – Lucent and the National Health Service in the UK.
Martyn Smith, Founder & Managing Director and Gordon Forsyth, Founder & Director at Brightive tell us what makes Sofia a place to launch and develop a successful business.
Please tell us briefly about your investments in Sofia? What does your company do in Bulgaria and outside?
As mentioned previously, Brightive is a management consulting company, with an emphasis on project management, business analysis and change management. The company uses a mixed-shore model for service delivery. Differentiating from other management consulting companies, Brightive has decided to introduce the “SMART” delivery model, which optimises client costs significantly and allows the efficient utilization of our consultants. Either being on-site (where the client is) or based in our professional services center in Sofia.
The company is not your typical foreign investor. We do not spend vast sums of money on production facilities and use Sofia as a base of operations due to cheaper costs. Rather, we have realized the potential of the talented workforce that resides in the city and have decided to build on that capacity by training and certifying our employees in various project management and business analysis standards to provide qualified and uncompromising service. Our clients are located throughout Europe and therefore we leverage Sofia’s excellent flight connections as our consultants travel up to 75% of the time.
What motivated you to invest in Sofia?
In 2012, we attended a seminar regarding investing in Bulgaria. The seminar was set up in the UK and organized by the Invest Bulgaria Agency. After making the necessary due diligence and consultations, we chose Sofia as our professional services center destination. Being a dynamic city, Sofia boasts an incredible working culture along
Sofia-based Rosey’s mark, a company active in the development of Bulgarian rose gourmet products, is ranked among the 10 winners of the European Accelerator KATANA, funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020. The ranking will bring a financial support of EUR 100 000 to the company to boost the competitiveness of the business.
This is the first external investment for Rosey’s mark. In order to receive funding from KATANA, the candidates were required to receive a sufficient number of votes from other peers in the sector, as well as a positive assessment and support for the idea by a broad audience. In the application process, the company competed with more than 700 candidates from all over Europe in the first stage, in which participants vote for the best products and ideas based on peer-to-peer evaluation. The Bulgarian team received enough votes from other sector players and reached the selection of 100 to continue to the second stage of selection by participating in a crowdfunding campaign. Thus Rosey’s mark raised the amount of EUR 54 000 backed up by 70 supporters. In order to meet the conditions at this stage of the application, Rosey’s mark attracted another two Bulgarian companies based in Sofia to the campaign – Blue Birds, a creative food style agency, photo and video content, and Media Basket, a digital agency.
After the two application stages that brought to the team recognition and support for their ideas and products, both from other agri-food businesses in Europe and consumers, Rosey’s mark was ranked in the Top 10 of the Accelerator and got the opportunity to use funding in the amount of EUR 100 000.
Rosey’s mark plans for the grant, to be used by the end of 2018, are in several directions: new products development; distribution network development, including export; deeper research of the applications of roses in food and marketing.
More about KATANA
KATANA is a European business accelerator focused on the agrifood sector and financed by the European Commission under Horizon 2020. The project is a rare opportunity to support projects of small and medium-sized enterprise at an early stage of development outside the IT sphere. You can learn more about the other finalists for funding under the program here.
More about Rosey’s mark
Created in 2012, the company develops the
The Financial Times in partnership with the Bulgarian office of the London-based consulting company Xoomworks is establishing a research and development center in Sofia. The technology team will be responsible for maintaining FT.com’s internal systems – subscription software, data domains, content publishing and distribution, billing and payments, finance and taxation reporting, corporate licensing, and more.
The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading business news and information organizations with more than 900 thousand subscribers across print and digital products. It provides a broad range of services, including news, comments, data, and analyses.
Sofia was selected due to its location and fast access to Financial Times’s head office in London, as well as for its technology talent pool. The company will hire 100 people over the next 12 months in the following directions: software engineers, business analysts and project and product management specialists.
The Bulgarian company for semantic software Ontotext, part of Sirma Group Holding AD, won funding in the amount of BGN 779 605 under the Innovation and Competitiveness Operational Program. The funding will be used to implement the ‘Іntеllіgеnt Mаtсhіng аnd Lіnkіng оf Orgаnіzаtіоn Dаtа frоm Dіffеrеnt Sоurсеѕ – СІМА’ project for a period of two years.
In order to implement the project, Ontotext will use technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and semantic modelling to link and integrate corporate data from different sources. The end product will be an in-depth tool for integrating heterogeneous data into market and business analyzes that are critical to various business operations such as customer relation management, attracting of new users, marketing campaigns, supply chain management, market analyses, study of competition, mergers and acquisitions, etc.
Ontotext was founded in 2000 as a technology lab at the Bulgarian software group Sirma Group Holding. In 2008, it spun off in an independent company and attracted funding from the venture capital fund NEVEQ. At the start of this year, the company announced a key partnership with the Canadian DrugBank, one of the leading databases in the field of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. In April, it was announced that NEVEQ had sold its 26.06% stake in Ontotext to Sirma Group Holding, the majority owner of Ontotext, for EUR 4.2 million.
Under the funded project, Ontotext plans to use its long-term expertise and experience in the field of cognitive data analysis, on which the Ontotext Platform had been created. The platform facilitates the analysis of data from heterogeneous sources and the integration of structured information and texts in knowledge graphs, which include information on billions of concepts and on the relations between them.
You can find more details on the specifics of the developed product in the official press release of the company here.
Another Bulgarian company, still in its start-up phase, will gain an opportunity to grow and develop in the field of artificial intelligence, machine self-learning and processing of natural language and algorithms. The newly established Connecto.ai was acquired by Leanplum, a company for mobile marketing, co-founded by the Bulgarian entrepreneur Momchil Kyurkchiev. Connecto.ai has a team of 10 employees in Sofia and offers automated online customer service through chat boards. By being part of Leanplum, Connecto.ai will expand its portfolio of online marketing solutions
The global management consulting and professional services company Accenture plans to double its staff in Sofia and Plovdiv. The Bulgarian branch of the Dublin-based company announced its intentions to expand its IT team of 140 specialists by 160 within one year.
Accenture offers IT service consulting, as well as e-commerce solution developing and consulting. The Bulgarian office has a key role in the services for Southeast Europe and the expansion of the team will further strengthen its positions in the region. Accenture is looking for specialists with Java, SAP Hybris, Saleforce, and Adobe. The company will hire both experienced programmers and young specialists willing to learn and grow within the organization.
Accenture set foot in Bulgaria in 2015 with the acquisition of Javelin Group. Since then, the Bulgarian unit has proved to be one of the leading high-tech centers for the company with its few but very competent employees.
About Accenture
Accenture was founded in 1989 in the USA, but has its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, since 2009. Today, the company employs more than 440,000 people and works with customers in 120 countries. Accenture’s main teams are in India, the USA and the Philippines. In 2017, the company generated total revenue of USD 34.9 billion. The tech giant has been present in Sofia and Plovdiv since 2015. The Bulgarian teams work on complete e-commerce solutions.
Appzio is a Finnish-Bulgarian tech startup that is working on a revolutionary technology for building mobile applications. The company is incorporated in Sofia since 2015 and to this day has gained 600 000 EUR of investment. Currently, Appzio has an established technology and a steady revenue flow. The company is actively looking to scale their business and further expand globally.
Timo Railo, co-founder of Appzio, tells us what makes Sofia a place to launch and develop a successful business.
Please tell us briefly about your investments in Sofia? What does your company do in Bulgaria and outside?
In Bulgaria and outside of Bulgaria Appzio helps other businesses solve problems with custom mobile solutions. Our platform allows us to create native apps easier by cutting significantly the time to build them. ‘Native’ means that they are specifically created for the device’s operating system and have access to all of its functionalities. The apps built with our technology are also tailored to meet the specific needs of each company, regardless of its size.
What motivated you to invest in Sofia?
Sofia is quickly catching up on the more mature ecosystems. The general spirit and forward-looking attitude of people and startup companies is a great motivator. Sofia has some of the best tech talents in Europe at the moment and in general is a great place to live. An additional bonus is the funding that comes from the European Union for local accelerators, funds and startups that further helps to cultivate the ecosystem.
Are there other local and foreign companies here doing business in your sector?
Yes, there are some companies in our sector working with mobile apps. Since there’s a lot of development talent in Sofia, there are multiple development studios. Yet we’re different because our main focus is our unique technology which we aim to prove is the best tool for mobile app development not just locally, but on a global scale.
What are the advantages of investing in Sofia?
As said there’s plenty of development talent here. There are a lot of investment opportunities as well. And the general economic environment has been stable and predictable over the years.
What sort of difficulties have you faced so far?
Difficulties like any startup — getting the product-market-fit right, finding good people and making sure that the revenue grows fast enough. In terms of operating
The creators of Delishu, Nikolai Todorov, Stilyana Todorova and Maria Dimitrova, launched their activities in 2013 by creating their own unique recipe for a revolutionary probiotic “cheese” made of cashew, called Delishu. The product was successfully accepted in restaurants and shops in Sofia. In 2016 the team won a place in the Rinker’s Challenge training program for young entrepreneurs. During the training period, they created a business plan and chose a plant to produce the product in larger quantities by renting production facilities. Last year the team won a prize worth BGN 20 000 with their business plan, which will be used to form the current packaging and branding of the product.
Thus, five years after the creation of the recipe the company has industrial production and distribution in all major cities of the country. The team aims to have its own production plant for its unique product, to develop new recipes for a larger portfolio, and to enter new markets. Delishu is prepared with a plant-based starter with live probiotic bacteria (with already filed patent application), raw cashew, non-hydrogenated bio coconut oil and Himalayan salt. In addition to its undeniable taste and health benefits, the product is suitable for lactose and gluten intolerant people as well.
Nikolay Todorov, co-founder and CEO of Delishu, tells us what makes Sofia a place to launch and develop a successful business.
Please tell us briefly about your investments in Sofia? What does your company do in Bulgaria and abroad?
Our investment amounts to some BGN 100 000 so far and is used for the production and development of our innovative product Delishu – a probiotic delicacy of sour cashew.
What motivated you to invest in Sofia?
I was born in Sofia. I grew up here and have decided to develop professionally here. I love the unique vibe of the city.
What are the advantages of investing in Sofia?
Delishu is a unique product at a global level as it uses our natural resources by benefiting from the lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillus Bulgaricus that are good for the stomach. This is only possible here, so our choice was brought to local production in Sofia, Bulgaria. Like any major city, Sofia offers a well-developed demand and supply market, which is a great advantage for a niche product like Delishu. In addition, Sofia is also known as a place of modern open-minded people and
The Coca-Cola Company officially opened its new regional Intelligent Technology Development Center in Sofia with an investment of 1,374 million leva. The Bulgaria Center is now the 2nd largest IT center of the company in the world, the biggest one is situated in Atlanta, Florida, US. The new center will deliver top-in-class services for the company’s global operations. The focus areas of the center will include enterprise software solutions, data analytics, cyber security, e-trade, AI solutions, mobile applications, machine learning, robotics, infrastructure and information security. The Sofia support center will offer business solutions to the global market with a focus on Europe, the Middle East region and Africa (EMEA). It will start with 130 highly qualified specialists.
The opening ceremony was attended by Mr. Ivaylo Moskovski, Minister of Transport and ICT, Mr. Lachezar Borissov, Deputy Minister of Economy, Mrs. Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of Sofia, H.E. Eric Rubin, U.S. Ambassador in Bulgaria, Mr. Barry Simpson, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of The Coca-Cola Company, Mr. Vladimir Danailov, CEO of Sofia Investment Agency, and Mr. Zheko Petrov, Head of the IT Development Center.
Coca-Cola in Bulgaria
Bulgaria was the first communist country to produce Coca-Cola – the soft drink has been manufactured here since 1965. The Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, one of the largest bottlers for the Coca-Cola Company, opened in 1992. Coca‑Cola Enterprises entered Bulgaria in 2013 by opening a financial center serving all Coca‑Cola Enterprises in Europe. The investment during the years of Coca-Cola’s presence on the local market is close to 550 million euro. Currently, the company employs some 2100 people. Coca-Cola HBC produces over 320 million liters annually in its factory near Sofia.
The German company Festo plans to invest 25.6 million euro to build a stepper and motors production unit in Sofia. Along with the construction of its third production unit in Sofia, the company intends to increase its workforce in Bulgaria to 2,000 employees by 2020. Currently, Festo employs 1,000 people in the country.
Festo opened its Sofia factory in 2015 with an initial investment of 9.7 million euro. The German company concentrates 95% of its production of microsensors in Bulgaria.
The German company has 250 offices around the world as well as service support in 176 countries including Montenegro, Slovenia, Serbia, and Romania. It has 300,000 customers worldwide and invests 8% of its annual turnover in research and development.
The German global leading automotive parts manufacturer Веhr-Неllа Тhеrmосоntrоl (ВНТС) will increase its production capacity in Bulgaria by launching its fifth production line in its plant in Bozhurishte Economic Zone.
ВНТС has reported increased customer demand – the supply contracts signed with new customers require capacity expansion, which will be met by the opening of a new production line in the industrial area on the outskirts of Sofia.
The exact amount of the investment is not specified, but it will probably cover the construction of a completely new production hall to the current plant, where some 200 new employees will work.
The German supermarket chain Lidl chose Sofia to be its fourth location in Europe to open a high-tech IT development center. The Lidl Digital unit starts with a team of 25 people. In addition, it is planned to further grow with 100 more specialists to handle IT solutions serving all markets where the chain also sells online as a complementary service to the physical location of the stores.
Lidl chose Bulgaria among other European countries due to the availability of highly qualified IT specialists and the dynamic development of the sector in the country. The company also has development centers in Germany, Spain and Romania.
“The fact that such center will also be opened in Bulgaria is an exceptional recognition and pride for us. This proves the successful and sustainable development of our business and the great trust we have won to manage such important projects for Lidl”, Milena Dragiyska, CEO of Lidl Bulgaria said in the official press release of the company in Bulgaria.
Lidl is a retail leader in Europe and has been present in the Bulgarian market since 2010. The chain has 87 stores in 46 cities in Bulgaria and two logistic bases. The company employs about 2 300 in Bulgaria. It plans to add another 300 people to its team by the end of the year, for 7 new stores in the country.
For its 7-year presence in the country, Lidl Bulgaria established a sustainable partnership with Bulgarian food producers using traditional Bulgarian recipes. A month ago, the company announced double growth in the sales of products under the Rodna Stryaha brand over the last year. It also said that the Bulgarian producers generated profit of more than BGN 15 million from sales of products through the chain’s stores in 22 other countries. Lidl Bulgaria works with 31 Bulgarian suppliers for the Rodna Stryaha brand and 20 Bulgarian companies sell through the chain outside the country as well.
ТЕLUЅ Іntеrnаtіоnаl Еurоре – the country’s largest BPO and ITO employer, announced its plans to recruit 2,000 new employees by 2020 at its hubs in Sofia and Plovdiv. Thus, the company, which currently employs more than 2,600 employees in the country, will increase its staff to nearly 5,000. The company’s management announced its growth plans at the official opening of the new head office of TELUS International Europe in the newly-built City Tower office building at Macedonia Square in Sofia.
TELUS International occupies 6 floors of the building, with a total capacity of 2,300 people. Currently, the company employs 1,500 people there. TELUS is the largest tenant in the new 23-storey business center built in accordance with the latest standards of sustainable construction. That is why the building will soon change its name from City Tower to TELUS Tower. The company will also retain its other office in Sofia, located in Infinity Tower, next to Bulgaria Mall, where another 1 200 employees will continue to work.
In Bulgaria, Telus hires new employees every month, including foreign citizens from Europe, North America and other countries, as its divisions work with inquiries and customers from around the world.