Prague-based Growing Technologies sro Markets SaaS CTRM
I quite often discover new vendors and often discover that they have actually been around a while operating in a discrete niche and doing well. At the back end of 2024, I found a vendor that was new to me that was based just up the road in Prague. After contacting them, I discovered that in fact, I knew the principals from my days at a trading firm with operations based in Prague. It is a small world!
Growing Technologies was co-founded by Roman Mara and Pavel Kuriscak who have a considerable amount of experience developing E/CTRM solutions at places like CEZ and Ezpada. “We learned how not to build this sort of software,” Pavel told me. “Now, we are building it how it should be at Growing Technologies.” In fact, they have built a modular cloud-based SaaS solution that incorporates things like market data storage, trading operations, valuation & reporting and real-time position keeping. The software is already in use at a half dozen or so customers in European countries like Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Switzerland, and Sweden.
“It’s targeted at smaller to medium shops and if they are trading several markets futures/OTC then it’s probably an ideal solution for them,” Pavel told me. Of course, being SaaS and in the cloud, it can also be used by larger trading firms to supplement legacy ETRM if required. Its’ current customers include medium-sized power suppliers, prop traders and even a renewable consulting firm that has it white-labelled to manage its customer portfolios. “Some of our customer use a module tor two and others the entire suite,” Roman said.
Interestingly, the firm has had little difficulty marketing the solution up to this point. “Somehow, prospects find us,” Pavel said. Word-of-mouth is a very effective marketing strategy – at least up to a point and both Pavel and Roman have strong rolodexes. Pavel told me that, in fact, their biggest challenge is in finding talent to join the firm. Being a small entrepreneurial vendor, everyone multi-tasks currently, the told me.
It’s not a surprise to find vendors like Growing Technologies especially in places like central and eastern Europe. Indeed, there are probably up to 15 or so smaller vendors located in the region serving various niches profitably and these can be found in our online directory. What differentiates Growing Technologies, however, is that it provides extended services around its software to help customers get more benefit from it. “The service is to help customers get more out of the software as they need it while saving on documentation and development costs.” He explained. Customers often don’t have time to study the full capabilities of the system, so we give them advice on both the software side and also on the business side (what does the OTC deal termsheet even mean, what are the risks, properties of the contract). Very often this results in some further customisation that we ad-hoc develop to the system so that everything is captured as needed.”
I will be getting a demo of the solution in the coming weeks and hope to learn more at that time.
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