From a Berlin Restaurant to a Neobank: The Georgian Holding’s Audacious Pivot

How a Pandemic Deal in a Closed Berlin Restaurant Grew into a 10-Company Holding

In November 2020, while Germany was locked down, 28-year-old Vako Gegidze slipped through the back door of a Georgian restaurant in Berlin to meet German partners. What began as a request to hire five remote staff evolved into a new company, Team Up, founded just two months later. The firm helped German businesses build remote teams, initially sourcing talent from Georgia. The venture broke even in three months and quickly expanded when it struggled to find machine-learning specialists locally, tapping neighboring Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Egypt.

By 2024, Gegidze and his Georgian partner Zurab Aitsuraze had bought out the German co-founders and folded Team Up into a decentralized holding that now encompasses roughly 10 companies. Dubbed simply ‘Gegidze,’ the group serves more than 1,500 clients across over 30 markets, with the vast majority located outside Georgia. While IT services remain the primary revenue driver, the holding’s three main pillars — investment (real estate, venture, B2B financing), a digital agency focused on AI-driven business transformation, and a consulting arm covering finance, legal, tax, HR, and company administration — aim to cross-sell into European SMEs.

The group claims a remarkable 95% client retention rate, a figure that derives partly from a hard-learned lesson. Earlier, a single client accounted for 40% of revenue and began dictating the business’s direction. Since then, the firm has diversified its client base aggressively, devoting resources to attracting new business and inviting potential partners to Georgia for wine-and-culture tours that convert initial goodwill into lasting contracts.

Now, Gegidze is eyeing its most ambitious expansion yet: a ‘neobank’ digital financial platform, scheduled for launch in 2027. The founder declined to disclose the licensing jurisdiction or banking status, stating only that the target markets include the EU, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The group also plans to expand its licensing consulting services for iGaming and virtual asset service providers. That pivot from relatively unregulated IT services to heavily supervised finance will test whether the holding’s entrepreneurial agility can coexist with the discipline required by financial regulators.

The Strategic Calculus Behind Gegidze’s Leap from IT Services to a Neobank

Why a Holding Structure, Not a Single Company

Gegidze deliberately built a decentralized holding rather than a monoline business. The three pillars — investment, digital agency, and consulting — operate as independent units, which limits contagion risk and allows each to pursue its own growth trajectory. That structure proved valuable during the early concentration crisis: when the group depended on one large client, the pain was isolated, and the resulting client diversification strategy now underpins its 95% retention claim. However, the holding’s financial weight still leans heavily on IT services; its consulting and investment arms remain smaller, making the future neobank not just a new unit but a potential transformation of the group’s risk profile.

The Georgian Tech Export Surge and the Trust Gap

Georgia’s IT and communications exports surged by 52.3% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2025, reaching $898 million, with IT services alone growing 69.3%. Yet much of that expansion is driven by international firms and relocated specialists, not local companies like Gegidze. The article cites data from Galt & Taggart noting that local firms still face an uphill battle to win trust from foreign clients competing against better-capitalized global players. Gegidze’s model — combining remote staffing, digital transformation, and consulting under one roof — is designed to bridge that gap, but it remains vulnerable to any perception that Georgian providers lack the scale or compliance robustness of Western rivals.

From Talent Arbitrage to Regulated Finance: The Neobank Gamble

The leap into financial services is not a natural extension of IT staffing; it requires a new set of competencies: obtaining a banking or EMI licence, meeting capital and compliance obligations, and building a tech stack that can handle payments, lending, or deposits. Gegidze has not clarified whether it will seek an EU licence, partner with an existing bank, or operate in less regulated markets. The founder himself lists ‘unpredictable global politics and regulations’ as the primary risk. Without a clear regulatory pathway, the 2027 launch timeline looks aspirational. At the same time, the holding’s consulting arm already deals with iGaming and virtual asset licensing, which may provide some institutional knowledge, though that is a far cry from running a deposit-taking institution.

The Culture Component: Hospitality as a Sales Tool

One overlooked advantage Gegidze exploits is the cultural affinity for Georgian hospitality. The practice of hosting potential clients in Tbilisi and Kakheti — blending business with wine and cuisine — lowers initial barriers and creates a soft competitive edge that purely remote-first competitors cannot easily replicate. The group’s founder notes that some clients first approached the company because of their interest in Georgian wine. While hospitality alone does not close deals (the ‘two years later’ meeting story illustrates the patience needed in German business culture), it may increase conversion rates among European SMEs that value personal relationships.

What the Neobank Ambition Means for Clients, Talent, and Competitors

For Gegidze’s management: The neobank plan must move from vision to concrete regulatory filings in the next 12 months if a 2027 launch is to be credible. The company will need to decide on an EU or offshore licensing jurisdiction, secure capital, and hire compliance leadership. Meanwhile, the 95% retention rate must be protected: rapid scaling into financial services could distract from the core IT services that currently support the holding.

For competitors in the nearshore IT staffing market: Gegidze’s holding structure — bundling staffing, AI consulting, and back-office services — could create a stickier client relationship than pure-play providers offer. Rivals should assess whether their own offerings could be supplemented with complementary services to match the integrated approach, especially in German-speaking markets where trust and relationship-building are decisive.

For Georgian and regional tech talent: The group’s expansion to 30+ markets and its growing consulting and finance arms may increase job opportunities beyond pure IT roles. However, the founder’s caution about team-size bloat (the earlier collapse in synergy when the digital agency grew too fast) suggests that hiring will be intentional and selective, not reckless.