SMB

We believe Azerbaijan’s socio-economic development is closely linked with entrepreneurship and its future development!

The role of SMBs in the Transition to the Green Economy Within the framework of COP29, a panel discussion was held on the topic “The Role of SMBs in the Green Economy” KOBİA and the "Invest Bulgaria" Agency to collaborate Within the framework of COP29, the documents for collaboration were signed to support the green transition of SMBs Representatives of the International Trade Centre (ITC) paid the visit to "Baku SMB House" A conference was held regarding the presentation of unified platform and the national standard for ESG A national standard on Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) has been adopted "KOB FEST" exhibition-sale fair held in Khachmaz A business plan – the key to successful and sustainable business "From Us to Business" startup competition is underway

Foreign investors interested in becoming shareholders of Azerbaijani company 27.10.23

In modern times, startup entrepreneurs are those who are engaged in the most innovative activities for establishing and improving business, and those who utilize basic innovations in their activities. Special concessions are applied to entrepreneurs who implement such projects in Azerbaijan.

The Small and Medium Business Development Agency (KOBİA) issues a Startup Certificate to entrepreneurs developing a startup project and the main benefit of this document is that it exempts entrepreneurs from profit and income tax for 3 years on the income of the business entity from the innovation activities. Furthermore, the Agency ensures the provision of grants to support local start-up projects, implements various measures to facilitate the process of access to global markets, and present projects to local and foreign investors.

A great number of the innovation-driven startup projects are already applied in our daily life. Electronic menu offered to customers in public catering establishments by scanning a QR code is also a startup product. According to Rahid Agayev, Founder of this project in Azerbaijan, to whom KOBİA awarded Startup certificate for his startup products, Rahid Agayev, Head of the "Monyo", has panned out certain success in the hotel-restaurant business sector due to their project implemented for the third year. The company currently offers three products to the market. These are "Monyo QR" (electronic menu), "Monyo Pos" (in-restaurant management system) and "Monyo App" (restaurant-portal) systems. The company has currently over 1,800 customers in the restaurant industry. Almost most of the prestigious restaurants across the country benefit from startup products provided by the company.

Currently, the company's electronic menu is offered on over 50,000 restaurant tables. When customers enter the system with QR, they can view the restaurant's menu, interior, address, working hours, discounts, and reserve a place. Currently, "Monyo" is working to enable customers to make payments online. In addition to the electronic menu, customers in the restaurant will be able to pay directly from the table via the mobile application without asking for the waiter. This project is expected to be executed starting January next year. To do this, customers will go to the "other restaurant options" section in the system and select "Do you want to pay?" and pay the bill by card.

Providing information about the "Monyo App" product, R. Agayev noted that thanks to this application, customers are given detailed information about restaurants, the number of which increases day by day. The application allows users to see the interiors of the nearest public catering establishments, current special offers, menus, as well as live music hours at the enterprise. Moreover, they can reserve a seat in a restaurant and get online payment, cashback in return, and then spend it on services and products provided by the restaurant: "After the latest update of our mobile application, apart from the restaurants, we also published information about places to visit in Baku, Guba, Gabala, etc." The entrepreneur also noted that the "Monyo Pos" system is developed to steer the orders from waiters in restaurants directly to the kitchen: "The waiter approaches the customers, takes the order and types it into the POS terminal, and the order goes to the kitchen directly. So far, this type of initiative has only been realized in our country by foreign countries. We have already made this available to restaurants with an application developed by our local programmers. After the next update of the mobile application goes into operation, users will also be able to post the videos they took in the restaurants."

R. Agayev pointed out that 2.7 million local customers benefited from their services 17 million times in the span of 2 years and 2 months of their operation with the Startup certificate. Additionally, over 500 thousand tourists benefited from it one million times. The mobile app has a total of 80,000 downloads. At the moment, the company's services are used both domestically and abroad. The application was accessed from the USA, Germany, Türkiye, Indonesia, India and Russia and they were introduced to the information reflected in the system.

He also added that investment is already being attracted to the "Monyo.az" project. The project was able to attract the attention of 2 foreign companies, one of which is funded by the World Bank. These companies valued Monyo's shares at $4 million. The company that seeks to own 5 percent of the company and funded by the World Bank intends to invest 200,000 dollars in "Monyo", and another foreign company interested in owning 2.5 percent shares is expected to invest 100,000 dollars.

https://vergiler.az/news/economy/26530.html