Established early in the '90s, INES has managed to stay above every little and big post-revolutionary challenge and reached a maturity, which now allows it to believe it is important enough for the local Internet market.
As the company executive manager Iosif Szavuj says, INES has got a lot of takeover offers so far, but none of them matched the company's expectations. One of the reasons is that, in his opinion, INES is one of the top five Romanian ISPs.
The stake is different for the patient Transylvanian man: the moment of the telecommunications market deregulation (2003), which could bring the major telecommunications operators in Romania and which has to completely change the rules of the game.
INES was one of the advertising pioneers in Romania and still has an advertising department employing six people. The clients still in its portfolio include Grant's and Minolta. It also used to work with Perrier, Campari and Bridgestone.
"The company did very well until multinationals came along, which are tough to compete with," Szavuj says.
In 1995, Iosif Szavuj came to INES with his small Internet firm in tow, which was to become one of the strategic fields of the company. The Internet department nowadays has 20 employees.
The company last year made $800,000 in turnover, according to Szavuj, while for this year it may already say it is way ahead of the schedule, having exceeded last year's turnover. This year's estimates reach about $1.5 million, Szavuj says.
"We generally target businesses rather than households," Szavuj specified. This is why we have the highest prices on the market, but we provide the best quality, and whoever wants top speed, pays for it."
Some of the company's clients are Softwin, Petrom, Radio Contact, Ploiesti-based Electroplus and Neutra, an ISP from Ploiesti. The company is currently operating in Bucharest, Ploiesti, Brasov and Miercurea Ciuc and is preparing to expand to 16 more cities, hoping to complete the expansion by the end of the year.
"We provide national VPN (Virtual Private Network) services as of this year, which is an added value service for the large clients opening communications services with their clients," says Szavuj. "We will reach Cluj, Iasi, Bacau and Timisoara by the end of the month."
When speaking about the Romanian market, Szavuj says it is quite demanding and rather "settled."
"The Romanian Internet market keeps developing. The Internet culture grows every day, and, implicitly, customer expectations for better services also increase, and we have been providing this for the past five years," Szavuj says.
INES also has a software department for developing Internet and Intranet applications, employing ten programmers. This department works with customers such as Fox Kids UK, McCann Erikson, Radio Contact.
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