Romania's entrepreneurs are no strangers to success at home and abroad. Every week we'll round up five local business pioneers to get the low down on them and their businesses. Feel free to get in touch with us at editor@romania-insider.com to let us know about new businesses and exciting entrepreneurs with a story to share.

George Lemnaru – the co-founder of eRepublik, the already famous online social strategy game. Lemnaru created eRepublik together with Alexis Bonte in 2007. The online game has 1.8 million users worldwide, who immerse themselves into a virtual world, online. The project has attracted some institutional investors. In 2008, the French venture capital firm AGF Private Equity, and several business angels invested an additional EUR 550,000, while in June 2009, a further EUR 2 million was raised from AGF Private Equity. eRepublik labs operate in Romania, Ireland and Spain and have received much international media exposure. More about the eRepublik founders here.

Sergiu Biris (in picture, above)– one of the founders of Romanian music and video sharing website Trilulilu, nicknamed the 'Romanian Youtube'. The website, founded in 2007, had a peak of 3.4 million unique readers in December 2010. It now has some 2.7 million unique users for January, which places it among the most read websites in Romania, ranking fourth in January. Entrepreneur Alexis Bonte is the majority owner of the site from 2008, with 51 percent of the shares. The site was then evaluated at EUR 2.5 million.

Dragos Novac – the co-founder of Metropotam, an online platform with information about events in Bucharest and other cities in Romania. He also runs the software company Krogos Software, as well as other online projects in Romania, such as Urbee. He is also the founder of RoBlogfest, a festival that awards the most popular blogs in Romania. Metropotam reached a traffic of 212,000 unique visitors a month in January this year. The site has achieved increasing popularity among Romania's youth and content has recently widened.

Serban Radu & Nicoleta Dumitru founded the first Carturesti bookshop 12 years ago. Now running a chain of Carturesti bookshops across Romania, the two have set new standards for bookshops in Romania. They offered a cool and cozy atmosphere, in many cases using historic villas for their bookshops, where people buy books, teas, music, and spend time. Its name is connected to events like Street Delivery, which brings art to the street every year. The brand has even expanded abroad, with a book'n'tea shop in New York, created together with the Romanian Cultural Institute. It also runs an online shop for English – language speakers. The Carturesti bookshop chain had a EUR 6.4 million turnover in 2010 and last year it opened the first unit in a shopping mall, in AFI Palace Cotroceni.

Corina Bernschutz – founder of the Bernshutz & Co teahouses in Bucharest. She has been working in advertising for the last 16 years and for the last six she has also been running her own teahouses as a side business. The first tea house opened on Smardan street, and another teashop followed, also, in Bucharest, on Eremia Grigorescu street, opened under franchise.

We will continue this section with weekly selections of Romanian entrepreneurs trying to gain a foothold in local and international markets.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: the companies)