TBC Business Awards were held in the traditional but unusual format this year as well. The country’s largest financial and technology company announced the winners of 2020 online amid a ban on gatherings.

This year's favorites are the Georgian business companies, which, despite a particularly difficult year, did not allow themselves to relax and found alternative ways to continue their activities with a quick response. These are people who spare no effort to reach new heights through daily development-oriented work and thus motivate others. 

Biliki is an English-language, personalized, mobile travel guide that brings together adventure, eco, cycling, city, shopping, pilgrimage, off-road and cultural tours with tips for a variety of customer interests. The application analyzes the interests and location of the user, on the basis of which it offers recommended tours with time-saving and optimal route.

Each tour provides the customer with a ready-made route, interactive map, road or trail distance with difficulty and weather forecast. Biliki is already affiliated and integrated with booking.com and tripcars.com, making overnight stays and car booking faster and easier. When traveling directly, the customer has the opportunity to follow the route using GPS location and reduce the risk of loss to zero. The integrated 112 key allows it to dial quickly, which increases the degree of safety when traveling.

The startup is owned by Tornike and Giorgi Tsiramua, whose startup is already effectively connecting the traveler with the tourism business, thus helping small and medium-sized businesses to deliver their products and services to the right segment quickly and cheaply. The range of Biliki users is quite wide: tourists, travelers, tourism managers, researchers, specialists, major players in the tourism business, representatives of small and medium-sized businesses employed in the tourism business, as well as universities where it is used in tourism education. Despite a remarkably difficult year for tourism, the development of Biliki has not stopped.

"COVID-19 has affected both the tourism sector and us. First, it reduced the flow of tourists to the country, which slowed down the planned increase in the frequency of users of the app. In response, we, together with Spend 4 Seasons in Georgia, started a blog series "Travel to Georgia Virtually", where we told about our travel to Georgia according to the tours in the app. As a result, with the help of the group and our use of digital marketing, the videos had an average of 30,000 views on Facebook and the number of app subscribers also increased.

We also actively participate in various accelerators and grant programs in order to attract investment. On the whole, despite the obstacles, our activities have paid off and increased awareness - more than 4,000 active customers, customers such as Toyota Georgia (our off-road tour presenter) and other business partners," - explains Tornike and Giorgi Tsiramua.

Biliki has global development goals. The startup intends to become an even more universal, international, mass and social e-tourism guide. The team plans to add, develop and improve new functionality in the app, after which users will be able to independently post and sell their tour routes, while the tourism business itself will be able to place and advertise its products and services.

"Our goal is to show big business and potential investors how important it is to support the tourism sector today and help strengthen tourism startups, because tourism is one of the main resources of Georgia, and technology startups like" Biliki "have the opportunity to introduce Georgian nature to the world, cultural heritage, and to help local small and medium-sized businesses by bringing tourists with them. The trail has the potential to become the first route space in the world, as no other hiking app can sell routes."

From 2021, the startup intends to offer a digital product to the Baltic states, Bulgaria and Romania, for which negotiations have begun. The trail covers the whole of Europe and the world market.

Translated from Entrepreneur

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