PROPTECH | Mitko Tsonev, CEO & Founder Valkrea.House

There is no majour technology which emerged. At least, I haven’t noticed such. I would say, there is a mindset shift of the users. Now they are more aware of the different expenditures they have, they own their time much more than before. We don’t think about our home as just four walls any more. We think about it as something that could benefit us, or exert costs on us. This certainly brings some more activity in the higher adoption rate of smart technologies in general, but also people search for such services to see how they can improve their homes which by now were regarded as a ‘black box’. They try to clarify what can be optimised, which costs can be lowered, how the environment can become healthier. As a result, I would say that people are more eager to really try these technologies and implement them in certain spaces at their homes. They want to try it out, and a no longer afraid to adopt it.

PROPTECH | Lyubomir Yanchev, CEO MClimate

It’s not a new technology, but it is one that proved very useful during the pandemic. It’s called LoRaWAN. You can imagine, it is kind of a WiFi, so we have like a gateway which communicates with the devices, but it can communicate kilometres away. It doesn’t transmit harmful radiation, power. In the meantime, the devices themselves can survive years on battery. As I said, kind of a WiFi, but for IoT. There is more adaption in narrow-band IoT. But with LoRaWAN devices you get really easy installation which is as easy as plug in a gateway. That’s it. It kind of look like a radar. You have one gateway for the entire building, and then you can connect unlimited number of devices there. Obviously, you don’t have to service these devices, because with the off-the-shelf batteries from the store they can live for about 10 years. The pandemic played a key role in the acceleration of the adoption of this technology.

PROPTECH & FINTECH | Georgi Demirev, Co-Founder appraiser.ai & оцениме.бг

We work very closely with departments at majour Eastern European banks. We have seen that some technologies are more widely adopted after the pandemic. These are all technologies which have to do with digitizing the mortgage process, e.g. Digital Document Exchange, digital signatures, digital identity verification, video consulting with bankers. The adoption of all such have been accelerated. None of these is new or revolutionary. All of them were also available before the pandemic. However, banks as very large institutions with strong inertia in their operations, such an external shock as the pandemic can play a positive impact. In our specific area of operation – automated evaluations and automated appraisals – we have seen an increased interest in digitizing the appraisal process.

MOBILITY | Anton Sotirov, CTO Sesame

We started using proximity sensors. It allows to gain information where the user is. This is what we have been using in the public transport sector for about 5 years now. We began using it in other spaces too. It allows you to interact with the place you are in, without the need to use a QR code or to go to pay for the service at assigned places. This proved very useful and actually, gained popularity, in the interaction of businesses with their customers while also keeping the social distancing norms. This namely we are in process of introducing at some shops, in the e-commerce sector. When you go to a place to pick up your order, you don’t have to queue and reach a cashier in order to take your order.

HEALTHTECH | Ivan Yosifov, Founder & CEO Naicoms

The technologies in our sector – Telemedicine – were already existing before the pandemics, but, as I said before, they gained a lot more popularity, more and more people started using them. Besides the Telemedicine, we also we have developed devices which gather all vital information about a patient, such as blood pressure monitoring, oxygen saturation, and so on. During the pandemic we added more devices to the initial set of 7 tech solutions we had prior 2020. We don’t have just a single software solution, but an entire ecosystem of solutions for Telemedicine – software, hardware solutions, integration of devices. The different solutions we have can be a solution to a lot of problems we encounter in the society.

PROPTECH & TOURISM TECH | Boris Pavlov, Founder Flat Manager

There are a lot of technologies which existed before the pandemic, but were not massively adopted. One technology which we have been using since 2016 - I cannot even call it ‘a technology’, because it is a simple mechanical box – is the self-check-in. All of our guests at the individual appartments enter by themselves. They don’t have contact with anyone from our staff. At first, we did that to save money. But now, self-check-in is a benefit not only at our places, but anywhere, because people don’t want to meet anyone. So, self-check-in mechanical boxes are one thing. We also use more advanced digital self-check-in methods at other properties where we have more units at one and the same place.

HEALTHTECH | Georgi Kadrev, CEO Kelvin.Health & Imagga

A good tech solution requires an interdisciplinary approach. You have to be good at what you do but at the same time you need to understand what problem your solution is meant to solve. I believe in the multidisciplinaty approach to innovation.

As I briefly referred before, there is a lot of automation of medical imaging – XRs, scans, and so on. I always like to demystify Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). I don’t like to pretend that this is magic. All these technologies in our space – AI, they basically are dependent on 2 key factors. The first one is the ML models, the design, the architecture of these specific mathematical models.