Running a Call Center in Georgia

These days ever more foreign investors are looking into opening businesses in Georgia. Call centers are especially popular an area and have been for a few years now. GEORGIA TODAY sat down with the owner of dispatch call center DsPro to find out what it takes to open and maintain a call center in Tbilisi.

Jacob, originally from Israel, runs a call center with his business partner Shlomi here in Tbilisi.

Tell us how your call center came to be

I moved to America over 10 years ago where I had a small shuttle business in New York. The business failed after six months and I decided to move back to Israel in hopes of furthering my studies in IT. I started working for a dispatch company there which grew quite fast and I became a manager and was sent back to America to open a store. Later, back in Tel Aviv, I worked in a call center that wanted to expand, and a colleague of mine got sent to Georgia and I joined him. After running a center for another company here, Shlomi and I saw the opportunity and potential in Georgia, and so decided to start our own dispatch company.

Do you think the call center business is popular here?

Yes. There are big American companies here that opened call centers years ago, and they will continue to open here- it’s just easier.

Do you think this business benefits the people of Georgia?

Yes. I hire mostly students, but we have almost 40 people employed here, and we are just a small company. We’re growing rapidly and will require more employees in future. The thing is, we can afford to pay our employees a more than average salary, which is the plus side for employees in most foreign businesses, and for a lot of the employees we provide medical insurance as well, meaning they only need to pay 25 GEL per month and we pay the rest.

How would you compare opening a business like this in Georgia to somewhere else?

They say it’s easy to open a business here, which at the end of the day it is regarding all the paperwork and so on, but after that it gets difficult. Dealing with everything else is problematic, for example, dealing with the banks is hard because they are reluctant to give merchant accounts and ask a lot of questions because they are afraid of people wanting to launder money, which is fair on the one side I guess, but in my case, I had the contracts in place and all the paperwork ready which proved I was simply looking for an account for the business. The other thing is the utilities: internet is bothersome for business owners. When you’re an individual, internet is quite cheap in Georgia, however, for a business they charge more than triple that amount for no reason at all.

Do you think there are still improvements that can be made in Georgia in order to accommodate foreign business owners?

Georgia wants foreign business owners here, and they do encourage them to invest and work here. But I think they should improve the banking regulations here for business owners. The overall infrastructure still needs some improvement to support foreign business owners, such as customer service: oftentimes when you call a specific service and ask for someone who speaks English, there is no-one, or they just hang up!

What’s your overall experience of Georgia?

First of all, Georgia is a beautiful place, and I think a lot of business owners decided to start a business here because of that. There are some things that bother me, like inefficient inspection of vehicles, fines that are quite small compared to other countries, and the regulation of the quality of food that you buy in stores is really not where it’s supposed to be. These are things that can easily be improved, however, and overall it is nice to be here. I think for most business owners at the end of the day they stay because they make money here.

Any advice business-wise for people wanting to open a business here?

As I said, at the end of the day it is easy to open a business here, but you will require a lot of patience in order to actually run the business. Just like in any other country, there will be problems, and dealing with them will take time. Essentially, don’t expect it to be easy, you still need to work in order to make a success out of it, just as you do in any project.

By Shawn Wyane