People of Novatel: Levente Csenteri
The CEO of Novatel about his past, our present and the future of one of the top 10 ICT companies in Bulgaria.
People of Novatel is a series of interviews revealing Novatel’s company insights and introducing our team to the public. Our first collocutor is Levente Csenteri – CEO of Novatel.
- Please, tell us a little bit about your life and career path (background) before Novatel.
I born in 1968. I have studied Engineering and Economics, than I had and MBA at Budapest Technical University, while I already was working at the very first privatly owned Telephone Company in Hungary, called MTT. In MTT, from entry level, I’ve been promoted to Internal Affairs and HR Director over the 6 years work experience. I grounded my telecom commercial experience in a Budapest based, telecom operator, called Novacom, starting as Product Developement Manager and being promoted to International Wholesales Director over the 2 years activity. In 2002, I took the challange to take the lead of Deutsche Telekom Groups South-East expansion, by establishing the Romanian subsidiary, Combrigde, owned directly by Magyar Telekom. As a first step of the project it was completed the Romanian FO backbone network and later on, over the past 15 years developing the telecom and IT business in such extand that Combridge became one of the most reliable ICT company in Romania. 2012 brought a new challange for me, by taking over the management and revitalize Deutsche Telekoms Bulgarian subsidiary, Novatel, which is also owned by Magyar Telekom. In the past 5 years we were working in Novatel to bring the company among the top 10 ICT companies in Bulgaria.
- What was your child’s dream? Are you living it now?
As a child I loved staying in nature. Later on I started mountaineering and outdoor sports like trail running, mountain biking, which I’m still practicing. From time to time I challenge myself on triathlon competitions as an amateur.
- Please, share your top three key ingredients for success in business and life.
Be devoted, be perseverant and work hard.
- What makes Novatel unique?
Novatel proved in the past 11 years, that is a reliable and financially stable Company. I believe that such a devoted TEAM, that works hard to bring the Company among the top 10 ICT companies is hard to find in Bulgaria.
- Tell us more about Novatel’s philosophy and your vision for the future of the company.
Novatel is a Customer centric company, trying to have a healthy balance between Customer, Employee and Investors interests. Our vision is to reach that level of Customer Experience which attracts without considerable efforts new customers, serving them IT and telecommunication services with passion.
- How Novatel innovates, what is innovative in the Novatel’s products, services and approach to market?
When we are talking about innovation in our company, our approach is to identify those customer solution needs that can be implemented in most cost efficient way, by integrating Telecommunication and IT solutions. We have a set of basic services and solutions dedicated for our WS and Corporate Customers, like Data Communication, Internet, Cloud, Managed Voice, Security, LAN and WiFi Services. Our engineers are always trying to find the best suitable solution for a Customer need. That is our innovative approach to the market.
- How would you compare Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria as places to do business? Pros and cons? Strategies for success for the three countries?
From one side the BG, RO and HU markets are very similar, being part of the EU community and geographically belonging to Eastern Europe. So the basic rules to do business in all three countries are the same. I can’t talk about pros and cons, because we are trying to use as use cases the success stories from all the countries. Certainly there are also a lot of local specialties and having local presence with experts in all these countries is definitively a competitive advantage which we use when we are talking about strategic approach of the markets.
- What will be the next big thing in business technologies?
Well, unfortunately I’m not a future teller. If I would be, I had been in a different position now. Taking it serious, what I see is that the companies, our customers are having more and more challenges to solve security issues. From the other side the business communication is showing for a while a clear trend of being detached from a certain location, so mobility and virtualization it didn’t stopped to be a need. IoT or rather Internet of Everything is pushing for its owned importance in Business Solutions. Always will be available more or less good technologies, or combination of technologies that could solve these demands. I believe that our world got to such a speed now, that wouldn’t allow to have such a “big thing” in terms of technology, that the mobile technology was 35 years ago.
Do you want to learn more about Mr. Levente? You can find his business resume in our site’s ‘TEAM’ section or you can meet him in person when you sign a contract with us.