BR Awards: Discover the shortlist for the Entrepreneur of the Year Category

The BR Awards jury had its second meeting this week and is ready to announce the shortlisted nominees for the 11 award categories.

At the Entrepreneur of the Year category, the nominees are:

Geo Margescu – Forte Partners. Geo Margescu is the co-founder and CEO of Forte Partners, a major Romanian real estate developers. He has a track record of developing landmark real estate projects with 15 years of experience specializing in development management and construction. He has developed several landmark industrial, office and residential projects in Romania, which have been recognized and awarded internationally. He supports sustainable development in real estate, with a focus on excellence in architecture and urban development and believes in transforming Bucharest in a better city, in creating opportunities for those who benefit from Forte Partners’ projects. He believes in the power of his team that has an extended experience in real estate.   

Geo Margescu believes in developing better projects, better quality in construction, inspirational architecture, design, urbanism, integration and know-how. The nominee believes that companies should not wait for opportunities to come to them and create together this business environment. That is why Forte Partners became one of the founding members of the Association of Real Estate Developers (AREI), created in 2017, which gathers the most powerful real estate developers in the market. Through AREI many initiatives were started in order to improve the build environment and future development in the real estate market.

Mihai Rotaru – Clever Tech (Clever Taxi). Mihai Rotaru is a tech entrepreneur with a business and tech background who has founded 3 companies. He founded Clever Taxi together with Alex Dumitru following a Startup Weekend. Seven years after, Clever became the main application for taxi drivers and passengers in over 20 cities countrywide. Currently, Mihai Rotaru is Clever Taxi’s CEO and part of mytaxi’s extended board, and Angel Investor with an interest in marketplace, SaaS, security & AI.

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He has disrupted the taxi industry and continues to do it by focusing most of his effort transportation efficiency growth and offering smart cities solutions. He has created an open and agile work environment for all of this 40 employees by putting creativity and independence of his employees first.  

In 2017, Clever Taxi became part of the Daimler group. After this significant step forward, the company took a more dynamic approach to market and almost doubled in size in the last 6 month.  By keeping close to the entrepreneurial environment, Mihai Rotaru  gives back to the tech community by investing in local start-up and mentoring them and often participates in tech events like How To Web, Startup Weekend etc.

Iulian Stanciu – eMAG. As the CEO of eMAG, Iulian Stanciu has contributed to the development of the Romanian retail and online environment. After taking over the executive management of the company in 2009, in 2012, he partnered with Naspers and grew eMAG into one of the Romanian companies that succeeded in expanding its business to Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. The company now counts a total workforce of almost 4.000 employees, the majority of which are in Romania. In addition to eMAG’s shares, Iulian Stanciu owns 100% shares of Flanco, one of the largest retailers in the market and Network One Distribution, the leader of the electro-IT market in Romania. Overall, Iulian Stanciu’s companies have more than 5000 employees in four countries.

In 2017, Iulian Stanciu focused on developing eMAG Marketplace as a platform for any local entrepreneur who wants to grow its business and access a new commercial channel. Also, under the Marketplace umbrella, he started a local program for supporting and growing the local manufacturers: Deschide Romania (Open Romania). This program has a positive effect over the Romanian business environment, as it helps entrepreneurs to develop their local communities, where they manufacture the goods.

Dragos Anastasiu – Eurolines Group. Dragos Anastasiu leads a group comprising 22 companies, and is an active participant in programs designed for Romanians living abroad. He set up one of the biggest international passenger transport companies in Romania, which, from September 2017 represents FlixBus and heads the biggest tourism agencies network in Romania, TUI TravelCenter. He also set up a rent-a-car company, which today represents Enterprise and is an investor in Danube Delta resort Green Village.

His strategy for 2017 included the increase of the degree of involvement and independence of his management team, the strong desire to have happy employees, which helps with increasing the retention and to facilitate recruitment. Other objectives were the consolidation of the international passenger transport and to reach the EUR million turnover per group, to design an Employer Branding program and to develop the teams, as well as to increase the degree of digitalization of processes and operations.

Over the past two years, the group led by Dragos Anastasiu reached the EUR 150 million turnover (2017), it took a leadership position on the internal tourism market, it furthered developed the business online and strengthened its position on the international passenger transport by partnering with FlixBus.  The group is the only such entity that covers the entire spectrum of tourism services (incoming, outgoing, business travel, hotel, transport(bus, rent-a-car, taxi) and is a leader on the Romanian tourism hypermarket (retail).

The nominee is involved in the ‘Vreau sa fiu antreprenor,’ ‘Atelierele de Antreprenoriat,’ ‘Business Days’ programs supporting entrepreneurship and implements within the group education and training programs aimed to increase the employees’ skills.

Razvan Voica – Informal School of IT. With 17 years of experience in Leadership Development, Coaching, IT Recruitment, Organizational Development and Marketing, Razvan Tudor created the Informal School of IT. The school has 2,500 alumni, out of whom 1,000 studied in 2017. With centers in Brasov, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Iasi and Timisoara, and 10 new educational programs, it has reached an 80 pct employment rate for its graduates.

Through its programs, the Informal School of IT offers specific learning opportunities for future entrepreneurs and business owners, a chance to understand a business from inside-out – from its processes to growing teams – and to practice a wide range of skills needed when starting on your own. In other words, the Informal School of IT supports not only those who want to work in an IT company, but also individuals who want to create a start-up, digitalise their business and more.

Active now in all the important IT hubs in Romania, the Informal School of IT took on the mission to contribute in a relevant matter to the growing market of IT&C.

• INVEST IN YOURSELF – Witness inspirational initiatives, programs and companies and meet the people behind these successful accomplishments

• NETWORK – 250+ influential top executives, active investors, successful entrepreneurs, officials and diplomats

• GET INSPIRED – a truly special evening in the company of  like-minded Individuals that aim to create value for businesses, for people, for Romania

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