Creating a Thriving Business: Benivo Founder and CEO Visits EPIC

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YEREVAN, Armenia – On September 17, 2019, Nitzan Yudan, the founder and CEO of Benivo, a leading company in the relocation industry, visited the Entrepreneurship and Product Innovation Center (EPIC) of the American University of Armenia (AUA). During the presentation, Yudan revealed to the AUA community his formula of success in developing Benivo from an idea into a thriving business.  

Benivo is an award-winning ‘welcome experience’ company, which aims to help large corporations with employee relocations. Yudan states that the mission of his company is to “make every employee feel welcome.” Benivo is a venture capital supported company, with its head office in London, UK and technology development center in Yerevan, Armenia. Among their customers are Google, General Electric (GE), KPMG, DeepMind, Verizon Connect, Vodafone, and Bloomberg, and the service is live in tens of thousands of cities globally.

Yudan founded the company when he was doing his MBA at the London Business School. He moved from Israel to London in 2011, and this business idea came to him after facing the difficulties of finding accommodation in London for several months. He was frustrated with his relocation to London. Since then, his idea turned into a top company in the industry. It is now a B2B with 70 employees and offices in London and Yerevan. Yudan led Benivo to win numerous prizes in competitions, such as the FEM Award of Global Mobility Professional of the Year in Americas, which raised seed and growth funding and featured Yudan in the Financial Times, Forbes, and TechCrunch.

In his talk with the AUA community and EPIC entrepreneurs, Yudan emphasized the essential role that one-on-one conversations with clients have in the process of creating a successful business. He stated, “There is nothing more important that businesses can do than to talk to their customers.” He also encouraged finding new solutions to old problems and always being willing to evovle to become a prosperous company. “The answer is not in the problem. The answer is in how you solve that problem. Companies must always challenge and innovate themselves,” said Yudan. 

At the end of the meeting, there was an engaging Q&A session. The topics covered the effective ways to do market research, the process of finding the best team, and developing business in Armenia. To the question of why they chose Armenia over all other countries, Yudan answered, “We chose Armenia because of the people, and their talent. We found people who were business-oriented and with the same cultural understanding as we have.” 

The Entrepreneurship and Product Innovation Center (EPIC) is a platform of the American University of Armenia (AUA) for promoting entrepreneurial education, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and startup venture incubation. EPIC provides an ecosystem for emerging entrepreneurs consisting of first-class facilities and collaborative workspace, programs and events, and a network of mentors, advisors, and investors. EPIC fosters the understanding and application of entrepreneurship in students and faculty at AUA to craft high-impact multidisciplinary ventures.