On Friday, June 5th, ISET hosted Mr. Rezo Vashakidze, the founder of Chirina Ltd, by far the largest Georgian producer of poultry products (sold under the BiuBiu brand), a Greenfield investment worth more than 80 mln USD. The main topic of Mr. Vashakidze’s presentation was entrepreneurship in Georgia (as well as Azerbaijan and Armenia).

After introducing himself, Mr. Vashakidze started to reflect on the main challenges and problems many entrepreneurs face when starting to implement their business ideas in Georgia. He brought some important examples from his own experience and gave valuable recommendations on how to become a successful entrepreneur in Georgia taking all the obstacles and challenges into account. As highlighted by Mr. Vashakidze, one of the most crucial problems in Georgia is that many young people (e.g. students) prefer to work for the government and non-government sectors, rather than the private sector or start their own businesses.

Before starting one of the most successful Georgian poultry companies, Mr. Vashakidze graduated from TSU and went to Moscow, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in molecular biology. He worked in Moscow and decided to stay in Russia following the dissolution of the USSR. He abandoned a successful academic career and moved into business as early as 1991. He currently owns Volzhsky Orgsynthes, a major Russian producer of basic chemicals.

In 2007-2008, as soon as the opportunity arose, Mr. Vashakidze decided to invest part of his personal wealth in Georgia’s agriculture and established Chirina Ltd that soon became a leader of the Georgian poultry market. ISET would like to thank Mr. Vashakidze for finding time in his extremely busy schedule and providing a very interesting presentation and Q&A session to the ISET audience.