The ninth Business Café in Belgrade, a popular gathering of small and medium entrepreneurs from Serbia and the region, was held Wednesday at Mikser House. The event, whose partner is the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, was attended by more than 150 interested guests from several towns in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Topic of Wednesday’s gathering was Business with a Message, with four speakers from Serbia and guests from the neighbouring countries talking about how to start and develop your own business in this region.
They all emphasized that the most important element for success is perseverance, and that it is important to strengthen the mutual support of entrepreneurs in order to help the development of entrepreneurship in the region.
Business Café is a project designed by the Zagreb entrepreneur Kristina Ercegović, and the idea is that, each month, meetings are organized in several cities in the region where entrepreneurs have the opportunity to establish direct contact and engage in joint activities. The project exists for five years, the longest in Croatia, and is conducted in five countries of the region. So far, thanks to contacts made at the Business Café, entrepreneurs throughout the region achieved ten million euros worth new business.
“Year 2016 has been declared a year of entrepreneurship in Serbia, and the state has announced a series of measures to stimulate the development and survival of SMEs. It’s always good to have support from the government, but gatherings like this one and opportunities for networking of entrepreneurs from Serbia, as well as from the region, are the right way to develop business, to encourage people and to open new opportunities. I often say that through these meetings, we encouraged the creation of more new businesses than the governments of our countries,” Ercegović said at the beginning of public discussion with entrepreneurs from Serbia.
Experiences in the development of their own business were shared by: Milica Čalija, whose company produces oat cookies Angels and who is trying to open the door for her product on the Croatian market; Maja Lalić, director of Mikser House and an entrepreneur in culture; Siniša Ubović, actor and leader of the life improvement concept Heal Your Life; and Ivan Brkljač, founder of a start-up project Arbobracelet, dedicated to advanced preservation of ecology.
The Belgrade Business Café was attended by several Croatian entrepreneurs who want to offer their services and products to the Serbian market.
Sponsors of Business Café in Serbia are Wiener Staedische Insurance and Grand Coffee. Partner of the Business Café is the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, and the organizing partner is Mikser.
The next Business Café will be held in Skopje, then in Dubrovnik, Podgorica and Sarajevo, and the next, tenth socializing in Belgrade, will be held on 16 March, with the topic Top Serbian Product.
