Inspire Fusion investment fund has bought one of the leading Croatian travel agencies.
The Inspire Fusion investment fund has taken over the Kompas Zagreb travel agency, one of the leading Croatian travel agencies in the outgoing and corporate travel segment, reports Poslovni.hr on April 30, 2017.
This is the second significant investment of the fund which was established last summer. The first project was acquisition of Fleet Rent-a-Car. The goal is to consolidate the tourist sector and create expanded offer for foreign tourists. In July last year, former boss of Pliva Matko Bolanča founded the venture capital investment fund Inspire Fusion with his business partner Krešimir Kukec. Their strategy is to invest in tourism, destination management, new companies from different sectors, and real estate. Fleet Rent-a-Car is supposed to be the starting point for the development of destination management in tourism, which led to the takeover of Kompas as a natural next move.
As confirmed by Inspire Investments, which manages the Inspire Fusion fund, in recent days it concluded the process of acquiring the 86 percent stake in Kompas. With the signing of the contract, the process of due diligence analysis was concluded. The contract was signed by Matko Bolanča and Ivan Pukšar, the former majority owner and director of Kompas. The transaction amount is not known, given that the contract is a business secret.
Bolanča points out that this is a strategically very important step forward and an investment in a business entity that has tremendous potential for significant growth and expansion of business. “We want to create a strategic change in the focus of Kompas, especially in strengthening the incoming sector, thus creating the prerequisites for improving all other segments and creating a powerful business project. With the help of innovative technologies and processes, we will strive to make significant progress towards further growth in business results and profitability. Our long-term goal is creating a strong and stable tourist company,” Bolanča says.
He points out that this will not mean layoffs, but additional investments in further education of the staff, as well as strengthening of the focus on business priorities. He also announced further acquisitions in the tourism sector.
Ivan Pukšar, who will remain at Kompas as an advisor to the new management, is very pleased with the transaction. “In ten years, there were a lot of interested buyers and partners, mostly from abroad. However, none of them could guarantee the successful development of the company. Inspire Investments is a partner that can enable us to further develop the company, which includes the retention of existing employees. They will bring us new markets, and also create synergy with Fleet Rent-A-Car, which will bring us new customers and passengers,” Pukšar says.
According to the latest available data, Kompas had about 92 million kuna of revenue in 2014 and 2015, with the profits of around 400,000 kuna. Kompas has 80 employees in 7 branch offices in Croatia.
