Károly Gerendai, one of the founders of Hungary’s world-famous Sziget Festival, and his former fellow owners of Sziget Ltd. ventured into fintech, by purchasing shares in Dorsum. The current investment will be used to finance further expansion abroad, while keeping the core business. Portfolio made an interview with the CEO of Dorsum, Róbert Kő and Károly Gerendai, the duo that built up the Costes brand from scratch to talk about plans for Dorsum and the future of Costes, a Michelin Star restaurant in Budapest.
Gerendai has known Róbert Kõ for about 12 years and they have been business partners all this time. Kõ had already been a co-owner of the restaurant Costes when Gerendai bought a share in it. He purchased the Dorsum shares from Róbert who had previously exercised his call option from a previous investor.
Gerendai pledged that as new owners they will certainly not want to deal with management or the company’s day-to-day business; because its not their cup of tea, but from their previous career, he said, they can conjure up references and international relations that could have added value.
According to Mr. Kő the primary objective right now is to give the company stable legs of ownership, to ensure the conditions for development and, of course, to make sure the investment generates return.
When asked if Dorsum has ever considered venturing beyond B2B and into B2C, Kõ replied that although they received numerous inquiries in this respect, with suggestions Dorsum should become a service provider, he thinks that for now such a move is unlikely. ”For now I believe it’s best if we remained in B2B and will not become competitors to our own customers. I think that’s riskier. If we’re talking about becoming some kind of a service provider, I can imagine it happening in B2B. Besides providing individual services for 80 to 90 clients, we could become a platform service provider, to which institutions can join. There are models for this, e.g. when complete back office are provided by a service provider. This does have a future.”
