The Ebriza story, the start-up that digitizes the cash register

In March a.c. we announce that BT Group is the main investor in Ebriza, a start-up that helps entrepreneurs track the business in real time by digitizing its administration. For Banca Transilvania it was another step in the world of fintechs with ideas that support entrepreneurs. More recently, in August, we came up with another novelty: the launch of BT Store, an online hub for presenting complementary banking solutions, of which Ebriza is a part.

Let's find out more about Ebriza, a Romanian start-up that totally transforms what the cash register means so far, the sales and management software, which can be accessed online, non-stop, from any device! Thanks to Ebriza, the entrepreneur can track in real time the company's activity, stocks and sales. In other words, it contributes to the formation of a new style of business management, but especially of a different entrepreneurial mentality.

The start-up was founded by Cristian Dinescu and Alexandru Mares, and is now valued at 1.5 million euros, triple compared to the previous year. It has 11 employees and over 100 clients in Romania and other countries.

This is how the idea of Ebriza was born

The idea came in 2005, when one of the founders opened a business in the HORECA field. Out of a necessity was born its own management software. "About 10 years later, although technology has advanced, things have not improved very much. We realized that there is a lack of a very important part in the management of a business: an online service to help all the components involved. This is how Ebriza was born" – says Alexandru Mares, CTO and co-founder. Therefore, it was a combination of entrepreneurship, necessity and innovation, launched on the market in 2016.

Drawing the architecture of the platform and validating it were the first steps. A year later Ebriza had the first client, and then followed the formation of the team and the effective implementation of the platform. "The first Ebriza client was a very dear bar in Cluj, Tube. Another bar followed, Plan Caffe, and then more and more. We helped each other. We grew and tested the platform, they had access to a completely different way of managing a business", recalls Alexandru Mares, CTO and co-founder. Basically, it is a software as a service, compatible with any device.

The three 3 in the story of Ebriza

Businesses have in their story, besides challenges, and moments, it depends on each entrepreneur how they generate and capitalize on them. Ebriza has three such moments:

• Participation in Risky Business Cluj, the first program to accelerate start-ups (2017): This fund to encourage business ideas and Marcelus Suciu made the first investment in a Romanian start-up, of 70,000 euros, for the development of Ebriza. "The Risky Business team was the first to believe in Ebriza and saw the huge potential. They also helped us a lot in the decision-making part related to the investments that followed. We met a long time ago with one of the members, and later we presented them to Ebriza when we already had the first clients and we had the idea validated" – says Cristian Dinescu, CCO and co-founder. Marcelus Suciu, co-financier, tried Ebriza before investing in the idea: "I would not have invested if we had not tested the solution on our own business. In this way I understood what the future of the cash registers will look like in Romania and it is one that deserves to be supported and promoted 100%".
  
  

• Ranking among the finalists of Startup Avalanche, an annual competition organized by Techsylvania and Risky Business (2017): "It was not easy at all. You have to present the idea of a jury that comes from very different fields of activity, from Romania and other countries. You have very little time at your disposal. It was a very interesting experience and we had the opportunity to meet many interesting people" - says Alexandru Mares, CTO and co-founder.
  
  

• The capital infusion through financing of 300,000 euros (2018), in which Banca Transilvania Group is the main investor, along with Risky Business, Marcelus Suciu - the founder of Marty Restaurants and Dan Isai - the founder of Salad Box. "It is a fantastic validation of our efforts that BT invests in Ebriza" – said Cristian Dinescu, CCO and co-founder of Ebriza, on the occasion of the announcement of these investments by Banca Transilvania. "We are happy to invest in this start-up, which will help SME clients to better manage their business. As a bank of entrepreneurial people, it is essential to support innovation and the development of a start-up ecosystem, so that it is as easy as possible for entrepreneurs to do business in Romania" – says, on the same occasion, Omer Tetik, CEO, BT. Due to this stage, Ebriza aims to channel its efforts towards the development of its own marketplace, which will give the opportunity to any business to instantly connect its sales and management software with the suppliers of products and services.

Business is easier with Ebriza

Ebriza is for open entrepreneurs who want mobility and essential information, received online, about the course of their business. Basically, for them Ebriza means:

• Access to all the basic functionalities to manage a business: issuance of tax receipts, nomenclature of products and prices, accounting reports, management advancement reports – all without limit in terms of users or management.
  
  

• The cash register, the sales and management software can be accessed online, non-stop, from any device. Thus, the entrepreneur can track in real time the company's activity, stocks and sales.
  
  

• Horeca business, retail or services, integrated with their suppliers or service providers, with order delivery or reservation applications.
    

• Solution that is accessed (not installed) and can be used in 24 hours. The Ebriza service is free of charge for the basic functionalities, issuing tax receipts, nomenclature of products and prices and accounting reports, the clients paying a monthly subscription in relation to the extra contracted functionalities such as inventory management, advanced customer management, integrations with delivery services, etc., and the SME customers of Transilvania Bank, who have an account on BT Store, benefit from negotiated subscriptions, to give them something extra in our collaboration.
  
  

• No more sales management using only the classic cash register, no reports, no inventory management, where everything is manual and where the data that can radically help the entrepreneur practically does not exist.
  
  

"I can't imagine how you could do a business, any kind of business, . The entrepreneur who uses only a cash register is legal and that's it. He won't have any real-time information about his business. It's very hard and you lose a lot of time to keep writing down information on papers and passing them in Excels. You don't have records of stocks, suppliers, losses, profits, nothing. At the same time, until Ebriza, the use of software of this kind was very difficult to access in terms of costs. Ebriza solves this problem as well. In addition, the entrepreneur has everything in one place and can access the software from anywhere. And, yes, we also solve the legal part: entrepreneurs can print the tax receipt on the cash register" – says Alexandru Mares, CTO and co-founder.

Plans for the future? Yes, many: the implementation of mPOS services, the development of the marketplace so that the publication of applications provided by external developers is even easier and faster, integration with accounting software programs such as Saga and Winmentor, but also the development of the partnership with food and beverage suppliers.

This is the story of Ebriza, for entrepreneurs, as its name implies. ☺