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May, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Romania entrepreneur aims to put home-grown UAV defence technology industry on the map
Raymond Martin in Bucharest
Radu Negulescu is always looking for acquisitions that could mesh with the e-government company he runs.
But the 30-year-old Romanian entrepreneur would never have guessed that a potential deal in Africa would lead to him becoming a partner in a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) company in his homeland.
Searching for a UAV operation to help his African client, he became so impressed with Romania’s Au- tonomous Flight Technologies (AFT) that he decided to help turn it into a major player in Europe. And it is this project, he said, that has the potential to put Romania on the map of the world’s most innovative defence and military technology-producing coun- tries. So Negulescu bought a 50% stake in AFT.
Negulescu began looking for business opportuni- ties as a 14-year-old go-getter. He started his first money-earning venture the same year and incor- porated his first business at 16. Too young to reg- ister his own company under Romanian law, he used a friend’s name to get around the legal age restrictions and hired his first employees at 18.
Today, Negulescu’s company, Trencadis, has ridden innovative e-government solutions to success in Romania and elsewhere. His company was recently named Romania’s fastest growing business, with
a growth rate of 700% over the past three years.
Radu Negulescu, Trencadis
Both FT and Inc. Magazine included the company in their 2018 lists of Europe’s fastest growing compa- nies. And Deloitte included Trencadis in its ranking of Central Europe’s Technology Fast 50.
It has also made Negulescu an anomaly —
a successful Romanian entrepreneur who doesn’t have gray hair. He is quick to point out that, de- spite being only 30, he has earned his stripes, however: he has been running a business for
16 years — more than half of his life.
The story of Negulescu’s acquisition began when a Romanian business colleague introduced him to officials in a West African country that wanted to develop a land management system.
Many developing countries lack record-keeping systems that show who owns, which pieces of property. This creates all kinds of problems, from deciding who can develop a parcel of land, and how, to who needs to pay taxes on it, and how much. It can also make it difficult to manage valuable public resources such as forests and watersheds.
A number of countries are getting a handle on the problem by hiring information technology companies like Negulescu’s to develop computerized land man- agement systems. But to create a computer-based parcel identification and classification system, you need raw data — such as aerial photos of the land.