The project “Providing Effective Support for Entrepreneurship in the Southeastern Region”, which seeks, motivates and trains start-up entrepreneurs, has attracted the interest of the leading Bulgarian television business – Bloomberg TV Bulgaria. At the invitation of Jivka Popatanasova, head of the noon news block, project leader Petko Georgiev and chair of ICT Cluster – Burgas presented his conclusions and observations from the entrepreneurial community of Southeastern Bulgaria.
The results from the first project activity are impressive – Meetings with over 300 future and current entrepreneurs have been held in more than 10 cities and districts of Burgas, Stara Zagora, Sliven and Yambol in the last 6 months, and in April entrepreneurship trainings will start (Activity 2), which include every knowledge necessary for the creation of a business. Something more – after the trainings – Entrepreneurs in Action! provide mentoring support to entrepreneurs, individual work on creating their business plan, business registration, and first steps (Activity 3).
Here is what Petko Georgiev shared from his meetings with our entrepreneurs in these last months:
- In order to achieve and overcome our high goals, we worked very actively with local and national businesses, youth and public organisations, as well as local and government organisations
- The vast majority of people wanting to create their own business are up to 35 years old (75 %)
- 85 % of them are in cities with over 50 000 inhabitants (bigger cities)
- most of the people who want to be entrepreneurs are still unsure of their knowledge and skills (72 %). Only 4% of them are sure that they are absolutely prepared for their own business
- the greatest desire for entrepreneurs is to have access – easy and at a low price and from financing without compensation to initial funding – from a state program, business angel or financial institution (90 %)
- most entrepreneurs want to grow in the sector of:
- information and communication technologies (45 %)
- trade (online and offline) – 25%
- agriculture – 20%
- tourism – 12 %
- many of the future entrepreneurs need support in business planning, provision of funds, client attraction (90 %)
During his participation in Bloomberg TV Bulgaria Petko Georgiev shared his impressions of his participation as a co-chair of the Federation of Clusters for the Digital Future of Bulgaria in the ongoing National Cluster Conference 2019, focusing on innovation and knowledge economy
He was a moderator and leader of the panel “ICT INDUSTRY – Cluster cooperation as a tool to boost innovation potential & growth in the region”
Georgiev told us about all possibilities and efforts, which the ICT community in Bulgaria sets for the development of the human potential in the sector, for the support of the ICT business at regional and national level as well as for the future of technology.
