Golden Reach, our engagement and growth company, was invited by the Mauritius government to participate in the 2nd Mauritius – Russia Investment and Trade Forum. We are advisors to a number of small businesses including the following who we brought with us to test the opportunities in Mauritius:
* Strube.ru, the Russian affiliate of a seed production and distribution firm from Germany with arguably the highest quality seed product in the world,;
* Magma – unsorted waste incineration burning at super temperatures which result in only clean, positive byproducts like electricity (crucial for data centers), pellets for asphalt and fero alloy melted down during the incineration and recovery;
* World WiFi – a blockchain company which following a successful ICO in now developing and distributing free WiFi hotspots globally;
* BDTG the blockchain development technology group with its own portfolio of blockchain and high tech start ups
My partner, Ilya Smirnov, and I were also accompanied by Ellada Albitskaya who is setting up an international desk at her company Lendl to market Mauritius properties to Russian buyers. There are numerous high end villas and mid level properties across Mauritius suited as second homes. The Mauritius government has made it easy to invest and to gain a residence permit during the process.
Our hosts were the Economic Development Board of Mauritius. They coordinated and facilitated meetings with the highest levels of government – the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Technology, Communications and Innovation, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Dean of the University of Mauritius, … and plenty of local potential business partners. We even got to meet the President, Mr. Paramasivum Pillay Vyapoory, who had many kind words for the Forum. A special thanks to Mauritius Ambassador to Russia Khemloliva for actively promoting our Russian based businesses in Mauritius.
As they say in Mauritius, work, live, play. So we took one day off for diving and dolphin watching! I’m hoping something good happens with our portfolio of companies. It would be a wonderful place to come back to work, live, and play (but in a different order)!