Selim is a well-travelled serial entrepreneur. He comes from a business- minded family, which started the first golf course community in Turkey. He graduated from Stanford University, lived in Canada, and developed projects all over the world.
Recently, he became a partner in Unigens, a Romanian company which creates management systems for gaming venues and casinos. His business and technical acumen brought him here. Good market insights and innovation, he expects, will take him further to success.
What do you think about the gaming industry in Romania?
I think it’s a growing industry, but it’s driven by online games, rather brick-and-mortar. That’s not specific to Romania, gambling is redefining itself all over the world. If anything, I’d say that the local market is not yet fully exposed to the challenges in Western countries – the migration from luck to skill games and from traditional gaming environments to complex entertainment where gaming is only one of many ingredients. However, it’s catching up fast.
How do you incorporate current gaming trends into your casino management solution (CMS)?
We can see that it’s becoming difficult to make a profit with brickand- mortar venues. So we enable our customers to make the most of their assets – build player loyalty, optimize operations, streamline management decisions. We developed advanced player tracking and jackpot management, so customers can build deeper relationships with their patrons. We also provide a proprietary marketing tool, Smart Points, which enables venue managers to reward multiple player behaviors at the same time.
2016 is the first year when casino and gaming hall owners are required to report data for every machine towards ONJN. Do you think this is a positive change for the market?
It’s a positive change, although for the moment it has caused some confusion. It’s important for venue owners to understand that business data helps them grow. It’s not just about being compliant. It’s about knowing what goes on in your location and taking better, more informed decisions.
How are you dealing with fast-changing technology?
We work with a very active Romanian developer, Cloud Research Studio. They have a strong appetite for research. Among others, they are currently looking into applications of artificial intelligence to a cloud environment designed to deal with big data. It sounds fancy – it actually means that we’ll be able to better understand players and support business decisions at every level, no matter the scale of the implementation.
Once you’ve sold to a customer, do you maintain contact? Does client service count as an important selling point in your industry?
It certainly does. We provide 24/7 customer support and I cannot stress enough how important it is to remain always available. We also provide installation and training to new clients, but at some point they are sure to call us anyway. Not so much because of Revolution issues, but because there’s something wrong with the machine or there was a blackout, and they need to find a solution. So, ironically, many times the support team doesn’t actually fix problems, but confirms that there’s no problem with Revolution.
Unigens is a young company. What are you planning for the next few years?
Indeed, we have been perfecting the basic modules of Revolution for almost a year and we are now ready to go full-scale into the market. We want to secure a top position as a CMS provider in Romania and expand to other countries. We’re already active on 5 continents, either operating or testing systems for our customers. In terms of product development, we plan to consolidate multimedia assets and provide a player interface through a dedicated app. So I think we have a long and busy road ahead of us, and I’m excited about the evolutions we’re anticipating right now.
