Interview from 2016/2017 Office & Logistic Yearbook published by Transilvania Business magazine.
Bogdan Pitigoi, president of Tester Group Iasi, reveals insights about the potential of the North – Eastern Romania, and is announcing new investments.
What factors convinced you to develop new investments, even if you already had a good representation in the business environment?
The city of Iasi is already considered a regional economic development pole with high development perspectives. There is strong enthusiasm in the IT sector and an increasing appetite for investments in the industrial sector. Existing workforce, IT graduating students, foreign languages and engineering are some of the strengths. The increasing number of jobs available and the relative easy employment processes are attracting more young people to work in IT companies or companies with services in this industry, companies which are specialized in software development, outsourcing, call centers or shared service centers.
Due to the investments in modernizing and development of the International Iasi Airport, the city has now good connections with Bucharest but also with other important European cities, the time needed to arrive here is now much shorter. All these factors will motivate the investors to visit the city, to discover its opportunities and to return with important investment plans. We have more young entrepreneurs, with a new mindset, with good idea and a different vision for the business environment in Iasi.
For them we develop attractive offices, at European standards, where to host them and support their development. They will find all the facilities here so that they will be able to focus on essential business details, having all the services that they could possibly want.
Which are the strengths of Tester Group?
In the last 20 years Tester Group has created and developed business in retail, services, car dealership, HoReCa, insurance, real estate – office and logistics and production, constantly recognized for vision, dynamism and performance, through the capacity to adapt to new trends and to respect quality standards.
The group is managing today Ideo Business Center and Solo Logistic Park – the most technologically advanced logistic park in North Eastern Romania and Tester Technology Park, in total 30.000 sq m office space used by 5,000 people and 10,000 sq.m industrial halls with companies having another 1,000 employees. Xerox, Lear Corporation, GfK, Oracle, Atexis, Tata Technologies, Sonovision, Falcon Trading, DAAS and KPMG are a few of the prestigious companies developing in our buildings, a business community we are proud with.
Our priorities are the companies and the entrepreneurs, the benefit from tailored services to develop their business model and they have all the needed services, including facility management provided by our integrated company, so they feel that they are a part of our business community.
Now the occupancy rate in our projects is 100%, but we invite you to visit IDEO, the top support and development business center in Iasi, to see the plans for expansion, including our visuals for IDEO 2. The construction works for IDEO 2 will start early 2017. Due to the requests from clients and motivated by the positive development of the business environment in Iasi, in the coming months we intend to double also our industrial portfolio.
The facilities offered by Solo for logistic, production, warehousing will meet the expectations from all potential investors interested in developments in Iasi, either foreign investors or business interested to relocate from inside Romania.
You are one of the most important entrepreneurs and developers in the country, which business style defines you?
I am permanently connected to my partners, I follow in depth the business environment in the region and in the country and I am aware of the accelerated growth of technology solutions for the near future. I have all the determination to support my partners, to provide for them solutions for their growth needs through developments in real estate in vicinity to the existing ones in a way that allows the development of our community.
We continuously invest to maintain western standards and I am opened to ideas for development, in order to offer our partners, multinational companies or start-ups, the support they need. The target for the next years is to double the surfaces of the projects in our portfolio, from 30,000 sq.m to 60.000 sq.m office premises. It is an ambitious dream that will become reality.
