With the help of the Rockaway, Mergim Cahani is developing the internet economy in the Balkans. The current situation, which favours on-line shopping, is one of the reasons why his Gjirafa content and e-commerce platform overtook plans by an entire year.
Soon it will be six years since Rockaway entered what for us was a hitherto unexplored market – the Balkans. And back then we followed our motto, “hic sunt leones” to the letter. In this commentary I’ll show you what the Gjirafa experience taught us, what’s key when you decided to build a business in a country you know nothing about, and what you should watch out for in the Balkans.
Two companies in the Rockaway portfolio have fought their way into Deloitte’s Fast 50 Central Europe for 2020, a list of the fifty fastest-growing tech companies in Central Europe – the Gjirafa content and e-commerce platform took 11th place, and Brno start-up ThreatMark 32nd place. The list monitored revenue growth over four years during 2016-2019, which was 1509 % for Gjirafa and 783 % for ThreatMark.
