Mila Bjelakovic, EY – We Expect This Year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year Program to Exceed Expectations and Set New Records

The contest for the new cycle of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Program is open until November 17. The team of the company EY is traditionally seeking new, promising candidates, and this program is a unique opportunity to gather all those who are the best in their industries or fields of operation in one place.

We talked to Mila Bjelakovic, Head of Brand, Marketing & Communications of EY in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, about how the entire process functions, what can be expected from this year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year Program in Serbia and when the winners on the local and global levels are to be pronounced.

– The success and survival of the idea, through years of work, learning, making an effort and being resourceful in extraordinary circumstances are an award in and of itself for anybody who has entered the world of entrepreneurship. Still, when an opportunity is created to additionally promote the strength, performance, reach and influence, it is also important to affirmatively pronounce the best, most promising and fast-growing business. It is therefore a great honor for me that we have been gathering fantastic entrepreneurs for over a decade now and that we have the opportunity to learn about their business, their way of thinking and, most importantly, to present them to the local, but also the global, public in a consistent way – emphasized Mila Bjelakovic.

How does the program function?

– Our company has been observing, studying and helping the development of entrepreneurship on the global level for over thirty years now, and over ten years ago, modeled after the global trend, this Program was established here, promoting good business practices and the most successful entrepreneurs. After the candidates apply and our team determines that a candidate meets the requirements of the contest, our company’s representatives interview the candidates in person at their business premises during December. The questionnaire we use in interviews is identical to the global one and exists so that we would present the candidates to the judges in an equal way within all the national programs.

Since the company EY is the creator and the organizer of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Program, it is somewhat surprising that, in the evaluation of the candidates and the pronouncement of the winner there are no representatives of EY and that, instead, an independent jury consisting of entrepreneurs themselves, previous carriers of this acknowledgment, decides on this. Their decision will be based on key factors of success, such as the entrepreneurial spirit, the financial indicators, the strategic orientation, presence in the regional or international market, innovativeness and personal integrity, and all this within the global guidelines, which are the same for all participants in over 60 countries of the world.

What can we expect from this year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year Program in Serbia?

– The entrepreneurs who are taking part in the program come from various social, family and socio-economic environments and that is the richness that is characteristic of this program – the possibility of overviewing various life cycles of companies. Entrepreneurship increasingly contributes to creating a more varied market and a better business climate. New challenges require new approaches, and entrepreneurs often bring them – through the organization, meeting the needs of the market and the readiness to explore new fields. Out whole team eagerly awaits to meet the new candidates and their entrepreneurial paths and we expect this year as well to surpass our expectations and to once again set records when it comes to the number of candidates, the variety of industries, their operating income and the number of people they employ.

At the beginning of this year, the “EY Enterprise Barometer” was presented, a survey carried out by EY among the 100 fast-growing entrepreneurs in Serbia. Is such a study being prepared now as well?

– In the business world, in which data and information are of crucial importance for decades now, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data provides important indicators of early movements and strivings. Reliable analyses and comparisons of the past years can show the path down which things are going – that is why the EY Enterprise Barometer is a precious publication which, clearly and concisely, emphasizing important percentages and data maps, has been tracking entrepreneurship in Serbia in the past eight years.

Arising from the wish to understand the enterprise scene in Serbia as well as possible, the study authored by EY – Enterprise Barometer is an inevitable examination of the question of entrepreneurial business operations.

This year’s study will be published in February and it will also announce the gala evening where the winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Serbia for 2023 acknowledgment will be pronounced.

When will the ceremony of pronouncing the winner for Serbia be held and when will the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year be pronounced?

– The ceremony of pronouncing the national winner will be held in February, and our representative will apply for the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year ™ acknowledgment and attend the official ceremony in Monte Carlo in June 2024. This program is unique for its global ceremony, where the national winners compete for the title of the most successful world entrepreneur. For over a decade now, local entrepreneurs have been among them, and with each year, they are gaining more and more notice as candidates at this prestigious global contest.

Ernst & Young d.o.o. Beograd

Ernst and Young

Mila Bjelaković

EY Enterprise Barometer

EY Entrepreneur of the Year

EY World Entrepreneur of the Year