In Dracula's Country, Dan Mazilu Built a Global Rival to Genesys: Mediatel Data

The local subsidiaries of Orange, Carrefour, BCR, and Unicredit are fighting to keep using it — like Ukrainians defending their ground. Yesterday in Bucharest, we witnessed a remarkable B2B conference.

Thirty years ago, a Romanian engineer created, right here in Bucharest, one of the very few call center software vendors capable of going toe-to-toe with Genesys, the dominant global leader.

Mediatel Data — 100 employees, 80% of them engineers — is three times cheaper than the American giant, doesn't lock you in, and has obviously integrated AI into its platform.

Its domestic market share is approaching 80%. While large multinationals increasingly push for global consolidation around a single CRM, CX or CCaaS vendor — usually American — Dan Mazilu's local clients are openly pushing back against their worldwide CIOs: "Mediatel Data's platform offers more features that we're not willing to give up, and their on-premise or cloud solutions are three to five times cheaper than what they're trying to impose on us," the CEO of a major local bank told me, seated by the river.

Twilio, Zendesk, Genesys, even Salesforce — these are some of the Romanian company's competitors, surprising names to some. Twilio and Zendesk were not originally built to power omnichannel contact centers, yet their developers are now trying to stretch beyond their legitimate scope to position themselves as the one ultimate interaction platform. CPaaS, CCaaS, throw it all in a blender and hope for the best.

Sometimes, despite the pushback, headquarters still forces through its preferred tool. But in Romania, the passion of the "fighters" and the custom applications Mediatel Data has built for its clients keep it firmly in place. "Our greatest strength," explains Dragos, Head of Project, "is our global footprint and thirty years of R&D, particularly for BPO players, telemarketing specialists, and customer service operations. Their demand for robust, multi-purpose products is demanding — and it pushes you to raise your game." Vocalcom's predictive dialing quality, for instance, allowed the French vendor to win market share among outsourcers worldwide.

In the former Cyprus Bank headquarters, Dan thinks about the future

Dragos himself is a former local bank employee who joined his supplier, drawn in by the family atmosphere and the freedom the teams enjoy. In the old Cyprus Bank headquarters — now owned by the company — you won't find a single VP of Sales or Marketing Director. "We're not great at selling, we don't really focus on it," Dan says. "People call us from Vietnam, the Philippines, Spain — always with the same message: we saw what you built for so-and-so. Could you do the same for us?"

This hyper-customization is both the Romanian company's greatest asset and its Achilles' heel. Should you sell at a premium to a large number of clients, with a sleek but fragile product designed to be replaced? Or stay the neighborhood craftsman, beloved by loyal locals? Recently approached by several investment funds offering to accelerate growth in exchange for a stake in Mediatel Data, this puzzle enthusiast is wrestling with a dilemma familiar to many founders: grow and perhaps lose your soul, or remain the local leader.

Mallem quidem hic primus esse quam Romae secundus.

Heineken, Engie, Cencora on the dance floor

At yesterday's remarkable conference, some of the answers began to emerge from the audience.

"I founded my outsourcing company twenty years ago, and all my call centers are — and will remain — equipped by Mediatel," says Violeta Rosu, Managing Partner at Bluepoint. Next to her, Mihaela Vioiu, CEO of Cencora — a major Romanian pharmaceutical distributor on an aggressive growth path — echoes the same sentiment. Both companies still practice telemarketing, a highly demanding discipline. "To reach the right targets at the right time, listening to and analyzing objections with AI, there's no way we're switching to whatever tool headquarters recommends. We use what does the job best. And we lease or buy it at the right price," Violeta adds.

When in Rome

At most conferences of this kind, the speakers are guarded, on-message. Journalists leave hungry, having failed to extract any real ground-level insight from people who actually know things.

This was the opposite. The conference wasn't held in an overheated hall with overpriced, underperforming wifi. I got to talk with the local heads of Engie, GLS, Orange, and Cencora. We talked AI, conversational agents — and the very legitimate reasons for not always listening to global headquarters. We were interrupted by live music (see video clips). And more than a few attendees were genuinely caught by the groove.

Customer experience and customer care conferences where 70% of the audience is young and female — and where a software vendor openly admits that growth isn't everything. In Dracula's country, remarkable things are happening.

Romania should not be forgotten: it was the first country where outsourcing companies set up operations outside their home markets, alongside North Africa — Webhelp, Call Expert, Teleperformance, and others.

Manuel Jacquinet