As the European Union is rapidly moving down the path of promoting innovative businesses, more and more entrepreneurship support initiatives are targeting startup communities in fast-growing countries. The German international cooperation organisation "GIZ" (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH) has rated Kaunas Science and Technology Park (Kaunas STP) as one of the most promising organisations contributing to the promotion of entrepreneurship in the Balkan region.
"This cooperation shows that we have earned international recognition. We are valued for our expertise in implementing entrepreneurship support programs as well as for helping to connect the science and business communities. The trust we have earned allows us to expand our range of services and contribute to the development of innovation across Europe," says Tomas Černevičius, Director of Operations at Kaunas STP; he is also leading the cooperation initiative with Kosovo.
Kaunas STP helps to foster an entrepreneurial culture open to innovation in fast-growing regions of Europe and to introduce new entrepreneurial practices. The Park's incubation and innovation development experts advise business incubator managers in the Balkan region, help to develop service packages for startups and organise networking events in Europe.
"We are one of the largest science and technology parks in the Baltic region and introduced the concept of a pre-acceleration programme with a hands-on business training methodology to the Lithuanian startup ecosystem in 2018. The first pre-acceleration programmes were tested with Kaunas startups. Later, when we earned their trust and invited foreign startups to join us. Countries such as the Balkans and Turkey appreciate our country's progress and are willing to cooperate and value the practical knowledge of business training. We ourselves grew and learned from experts from Aalto University in Finland, Silicon Valley (USA), and today we are sharing our experience with other countries as well," says Paulius Nezabitauskas, the Director of Kaunas STP.
On June 30, a cooperation agreement was signed in Kaunas with Makerspace Innovation Center Prizren. Also, the future cooperation activities were intended by Innovation and Training Park Prizren. This agreement paves the way for both Lithuanian businesses and business communities in Kosovo to develop R&D products and innovation-based technologies jointly.
"As we share many cultural similarities between our countries in different geographic regions, our agreement will bring Kosovo’s innovation ecosystem a new culture of work, joining Kosovo’s Tech community with Baltics. And for more, the youth will be creating synergies and co-owned companies operating in Kosovo and Lithuania", says Enis Qafeleshi, Head of Makerspace Innovation Centre Prizren in Kosovo, who is visiting Lithuania.
The ICT sector is the most popular in the Balkan area, and a lot of the companies are scouting for IT talents. One of the fastest growing startups is Gjirafa, a portal platform, which includes search, vertical search, classified, news, and bus schedule. Gjirafa’s ecosystem of services encompasses e-commerce, video streaming, online marketing, cloud computing, and entertainment production. Also recently Tive startup has attracted the venture capital community’s attention. This April the startup raised 54 million US dollar (51.7 million Eur) in a Series B financing round led by AXA Venture Partners with other investors. Tive develops tech solutions for supply chain visibility with real-time single-use and disposable GPS trackers, sensor-driven awareness and analysis of in-transit goods.