GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: DEJAN RANDIC, CO-FOUNDER OF ICT HUB SERBIA
Dejan Ranđić, Co-Founder of ICT Hub and General Manager at DNA Communications, is an experienced manager, entrepreneur, and consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the areas of innovation, integrated marketing and marketing management, advertising, business planning, and negotiation. He is a strong sales professional with an MBA with a concentration in Executive Management from COTRUGLI Business School.
Founded in 2014 with financial support from USAID, ICT Hub is a center for tech-entrepreneurship and innovation in Belgrade that has quickly positioned itself as an ecosystem that connects all relevant stakeholders in the innovation process. What was the main reason for establishing the ICT Hub, and what kind of support and resources do you offer to entrepreneurs?
ICT Hub started as a startup incubator 6 years ago with the support of the USAID GDA Public-Private alliance program, with the desire to boost the local startup scene and open new possibilities to all with an entrepreneurial mindset and a desire to learn and create. A very important attitude, determined ICT Hub from its beginning was the fact that we were transparently oriented as a for-profit organization, thus invested significant funds from the very beginning. Since then, we have had quite a journey, listening to the market needs and trends and changing accordingly. Crucial for us, as a for-profit organization, was the process of looking for and inventing our profitable business model, while we were still supported by USAID. Today we have 4 main branches of our business. The project unit works on project implementation with local and global institutional partners from the US and EU for 5 years now, mainly focusing on the SME’s segment in the region and digitization of that segment. The business design unit works with corporate clients in a consulting capacity, improving business processes, and helping our clients to develop new business models and improve competitiveness. ICT Hub Venture is the first privately owned venture fund in Serbia that until now has invested in 10 startups. All that comes into our “ICT Hub Playground” — coworking space that is in the center of Belgrade and serves as a daily office to the entire ICT Hub team, as well as freelancers, entrepreneurs, and startup teams that are not just the tenants of the coworking space but also a community that gains knowledge, mentorship and other benefits from our ongoing programs and events. All in all — we believe that under the ICT Hub roof, today we host all that is needed to promote our key motto ‘Empowering innovation.’
Apart from access to training and peer support networks, one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs in the Western Balkans is access to finance. In 2017, ICT Hub initiated ICT Hub Ventures, the first Serbian privately owned investment fund that invests in tech-startups at the earliest stage of development, worth a million euros. What is your experience so far, do more young people from the region have the courage to take the leap into the startup world?
The tendency for young people to start companies straight out of college is slowing down. More and more startups are being founded by people with more business or technical experience — the people who are coming from corporations or SMEs. They tend to be more coachable than young people and better organized. Also, we consider startups which support some area of traditional industry as the most promising, which requires some experience for founders, thus imply some limitations for “out of college” young people. Young people need more mentoring time to work on their idea, sales and marketing strategy, business planning, financial forecasting, etc. They also fail more often than the first group of people. Nevertheless, young people are still ready to take the risk and try to build the next success story from this region. If not as founders, certainly as extremely valuable team members.
As one of the USAID EDGE grantees, together with your partners from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, you are implementing the D-tour project that aims to improve the digital skills of SMEs active in rural, ecological, and adventure tourism from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. What kind of activities do you plan to implement to strengthen the digital awareness and expertise of the tourism service providers?
In order to assist, educate, and empower small tourism businesses in these 3 counties, we designed a set of project activities that go in a specific order and complement each other. First of them was an extensive qualitative and quantitative research ‘’ICT tools in rural, eco and adventure tourism’’ with over 300 participants from all 3 countries, that was conducted before the educational Project activities. This was done so that the results of the research could help with planning of the subsequent educational activities within the Project and bridge the knowledge gaps we identified as key and most urgent. In accordance with these identified gaps and issues, 9 online workshops were planned in order to provide the basic knowledge on the most popular tourism platforms, their functionalities, and the ways to communicate through them. After the workshops, 3 digital academies are planned for the beginning of 2021, where an in-depth approach and customization of content will be done for 15 attendees from each country. As the final Project activity, a publication with key findings and lessons learned will be created. The big idea of all the Project activities is the empowerment of small tourism SMEs through digitization, learning new skills and using the great potential given by the internet era, in order to dive deep into the industry and help the beneficiaries position themselves in the online world, improve their businesses and in the light of the current pandemic challenges, overcome the huge obstacles created by the virus and adapt in the way that works best for them.
Apart from the 9 ongoing digital awareness workshops, conducted under the USAID EDGE grant, you are planning to organize a total of 3 Academies, with each participating country hosting one of them. What makes these academies unique, what sets them apart from the workshops?
The thing that makes the Academies unique is the focused approach that is based on the research about the use of ICT tools conducted at the beginning of the Project. Also, the methodology we use combines lectures with practical examples and hands-on exercises from experts with lots of domain experience with mentoring and guidance adapted for the participant’s level of knowledge and their business needs. Since the whole program is designed to be conducted in an online format, we created it to be fully dynamic, with daily lectures, next-day homework, available mentors for help, and guidance. This kind of structured approach is, from our experience, the most efficient as the progress is immediate and easier to follow. Also, since ICT Hub has a number of ongoing educational programs from whom a lot started as a Project activity (including Innovation Management Academy, Inozone training for young managers, as well as a number of tailor-made courses), if the demand of the market proves to be high for the 3 planned Academies, we plan to enlist this Program in ICT Hub’s yearly activities and continue to generate value for the tourism sector in the region. This is important for us since a part of our strategy is the long-term sustainability of everything we do.
In just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on the livelihood of millions of people worldwide. Countries are now increasing their investments in digital skills development to ensure that youth can leverage online education and employment opportunities, and at the same time, businesses can begin their digital transformation. What are the challenges and the opportunities you are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Regarding the challenges and the opportunities, they are intertwined — the general unpredictability and the uncertainty of all aspects of business drives us to agility and speed, now we are used to adapting fast, that is our business model and what we teach our clients. But at the same time, in a crisis, it is very hard to keep up for some, and in terms of the whole market — we are only as strong as the weakest link. In March, we continued working and leveled up all of our business activities. We tried to position ourselves as partners in crises to all our business collaborators and clients and to try and guide them and us together through the tough times. Together we saw that the existing premises of business, innovation, and transformation that worked before no longer apply; And further — that blindly applying them can even be dangerous, and saw that the only way to survive and thrive is to examine the core of your business, your clients, services, the market itself and all previous ways of doing things — in order to create your own model of transformation that will work in the future. So, the jolt from some form of a comfort zone was and still is a danger and a challenge for us, and we are constantly adapting to make it into an opportunity.
Ever since the founding, ICT Hub has been working on encouraging more people to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs. So far, you have invested in a total of 10 new startups, over 500 young Serbians have participated in the ICT Hub’s intensive training module, and many more have attended free public lectures on a wide variety of topics. What are the ICT Hub future plans, what are the major trends for the next decade of innovation?
As we saw with the pandemic, times are changing fast and old rules do not apply. Business is also changing, the needs of the customers change, and the way how they use, buy, consume, and communicate evolves very fast. The key to growth will certainly be getting to know your customers, users, and find meaningful ways to interact with them. Data, which comes to us through the digital world, should be utilized in a more focused way, more in-depth and meaningful because data is generated by the users of your brand, your business, and that is a priceless source of knowledge. We must continue with initiatives, our development, and our never-ending learning process in order to understand the problems and challenges facing the market and our clients and partners, and position ourselves as a key partner in solving those problems because that is the only way for us to evolve and thrive too.
