Business
Posted: 2 years ago
Author: Nina Gomarteli

Coliving New_Level: We are Building a Village for Digital Nomads in Georgia

''By traveling and communicating with digital nomads, I have concluded that Georgia is of great interest as a tourist country. After studying the legislation, I decided that this is the most suitable country for starting a business. Moreover, I lived in Georgia for some time before. In part, it is understandable to me in its mentality and culture. I am from the USSR. In addition, many people in Georgia speak my native Russian language. This is how I ended up here,'' Igor Shi tells CBW the story of how it all started. 

Igor is from Moscow, Russia. He has worked as a landscape designer for many years in the past. He started traveling a lot six years ago. During this time, Igor lived in eight countries and visited ten more, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a sailing boat in a team of five.

Constant travel requires some expense. Therefore, He learned the profession of a web designer and started earning a small income. This is how Igor became a digital nomad. We asked Igor to run us through the process of building a home for digital nomads:

''In 2018, when I was living in Montenegro, I learned about a new trend in real estate - coliving. It is when people with common interests and similar lifestyles share a roof over their heads, work on the same project or each on their own, study together, relax together, and have a fun time.

Then I thought it would work great for digital nomads as well.

Since then, my idea has been to create a coliving network for digital nomads.

There have been two attempts to open coliving in different countries. One in the same place in Montenegro, but it was an immature project. The second attempt was in Bulgaria. Relations with the landowner didn't work out there.

What’s the vision of Coliving New_Level?

The feature of our coliving is the location. This is a village, closer to nature, to clean air, away from the noise and distractions of the city that interfere with productive work. I found this place near Kutaisi on the outskirts of Gumbrini village. Previously, it was a fairly large working settlement with a park, a country club, a large department store, a school, and a kindergarten. But then the local enterprise went bankrupt. Many public buildings fell into disrepair and disrepair.

Here I have leased a plot of land for 99 years and plan to build a digital nomadic home for about forty people. In addition, I plan to engage the capacity of my neighbors increase the community to a hundred people, and create an infrastructure and ecosystem for digital nomads in Georgia. 

That is, the nomads will get accommodation, the opportunity to work in a modern coworking space, live in a community of like-minded people, work in our maker space, participate in events, leave their belongings in storage until their next visit, eat delicious and healthy food, do sports, do hiking and even play football, as the abandoned football field is only a hundred meters away.

We also plan to open a public maker space for craftsmen and a Sunday school for village children based on our spaces. Here we and our residents will teach children about modern online professions, English, environmental education, art, and DIY.

I also dream of having "competitors" near us, with whom we could cooperate and organize joint events and projects. Then we'll have a center of attraction for digital nomads in Gumbrini.

How is it like designing the space from scratch?

I bought a plot of land on which there was already an old house, made a project of the future coliving taking into account the existing layout of the house, and began construction.

My knowledge and experience as a landscape architect, designer, and builder help me.

How do you go about reaching out to your potential residents and building community?

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience in building a community around a project. But I believe that by creating a good product it will be much easier to find people who want to use it.

We are building our community with the help of social media.

We are also building a community around our coworking space from expats and foreigners living in Kutaisi.

What are the deadlines, when are you planning to launch the place? 

The coworking space and camping accommodation for 10 people are already ready.

We plan to open the first eight private rooms in the main coliving building for 12 people in 2022.