Vasileios Nikolakaros – Tasting entrepreneurship

Host entrepreneur:
Antonis Zacharopoulos (Cipro )
Age: 43
Company name: A-Z Physio Health
Settore di attività: Salute, bellezza e servizi sociali

Period of exchange: 05/2014 until 10/2014
Duration of exchange: 5 months

Vasileios Nikolakaros is a Greek would-be entrepreneur who wants to start a physiotherapy centre in Athens to offer rehabilitation services to patients with musculoskeletal and neurological issues.
But, before taking this important step that will change his life, Vasileios wanted first to test his entrepreneurial potential and see what it takes to be his own boss in real life situations.
With 10 years of experience in the sector, Vasileios has great chances of success but his lack of business knowledge and most importantly on how to run his own company, would actually play on his disfavor.
To fill in this gap, Vasileios put together a solid business plan and applied for the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme.
He rapidly got in touch with Antonis Zacharopoulos, owner of the A-Z Physio Health centre in Nicosia Cyprus.

Host entrepreneur Antonis is a physiotherapist who after years of experience in the field, notably in Sweden and in the United Kingdom, felt the need to go back to Cyprus and start his own private business in 2004.
The stay-abroad did not take long to prepare. After agreeing on the activity plan, Vasileios flew to Cyprus in May.
Vasileios and Antonis worked together during 5 months on various projects including the organisation of several Pilates workshops for patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) and Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
As part the learning process, Antonis also taught new entrepreneur Vasileios the manual therapy techniques of Mulligan method.
The collaboration was a real success for both entrepreneurs and thanks to the stay-abroad, Vasileios could increase his knowledge on various aspect of his work notably on the physiotherapeutic services to be offered to patients with autoimmunity disease and the management of patients.
Vasileios also had the opportunity to attend conferences held on healthcare where he could meet doctors and start his list of contacts.
Most importantly, he gained knowledge on the management of a successful business including the financial aspects created a list of contact and feels now more confident about his business idea.

For more information, please contact the local contact points involved in the exchange:

New entrepreneur’s contact point:
Asset Technology (Athens)

Host entrepreneur’s contact point:
DekaPlus Business Services LTd (Limassol)

This article was funded by the European Union’s COSME Programme (2014-2020).
The content of this article represents the views of the author only and it is her sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Executive Agency of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.