Niklas Kouparanis, the co-founder and CEO of Bloomwell Group, one of Europe’s largest cannabis companies, says participating in legal cannabis was his long-term goal, even prior to setting out as an entrepreneur.
“I earned my master’s degree in management and in 2017, I wrote my thesis on the potential of upcoming cannabis legalization measures, with medical cannabis being the catalyst and game changer,” Kouparanis says. “I started working in the cannabis industry because it’s the opportunity of a lifetime to get in on the ground of an entirely new global market with such enormous potential.”
A self-proclaimed entrepreneur at heart, Kouparanis founded the Bloomwell Group with his sister, Anna-Sophia Kouparanis, and has since invested in and helped build several cannabis businesses in Europe, including Algea Care, a leading cannabis telemedicine service in Germany with more than 10,000 patients treated; Ilios Santé, a licensed distribution company; and Breezy Brands, which includes Breezy, the continent’s first e-commerce lifestyle cannabis brand. Bloomwell now operates in nearly every segment of Europe’s cannabis industry, other than cultivation.
Kouparanis believes Germany, and Europe in general, may be on the precipice of something even greater than the industry being built across the pond.
“With our progressive policies, Europe has the potential to be a bigger cannabis market than the U.S. in the future,” he says. “I hope that one day North America will see that generating data and evidence has been the key for destigmatization and new, more progressive European cannabis policies that legalize on a federal level without fragmented markets, banking constraints and other issues.”