The famous Croatian smart benches have made their way to Qatar!
Aspire Zone and Doha Technologies (a member of the CTBA Group) have presented the first smart benches in Qatar. The project is in line with Qatar's national vision of 2030, which emphasizes that the Aspire Park, known as the most famous park in Qatar, becomes a “smart park", reports Poslovni.hr on January 25, 2019.
The President of CTBA Group and the newly founded Croatian Business Council, Mr. Mario Lozančić, who counts more than ten years of successful business experience in Qatar, believes that cooperation with Aspire will continue to transform Doha into a smart city. The smart bench was made by the well-known Croatian company Include, the world leader in smart bench innovations.
As we’ve written before, the smart benches are complete with wireless chargers, two standard USB ports, and provides free Wi-Fi so you can easily search the web. The bench is equipped with LED night lighting, which illuminates the area around the bench in the evening hours. Every 30 minutes, various sensors - for humidity, air quality or temperature sensors - collect information and then send them to the servers.
The "Steora Urban" model, installed in the Aspire Park, is the first street bench in the world with a built-in 19-inch IPS LCD screen. Because it combines solar power and AC grid power, it’s great for indoor spaces and low-light areas. The LCD screen can be used to display city news, notices, images, or other information to the public.
Ivan Mrvoš, the young entrepreneur from Solin behind the smart popular smart benches, took to Facebook on Friday afternoon to explain what a year 2019 has been so far.
“How 2019 started for Include. First - I was on holiday until 15.01, which means everyone in the office was great.
- Our new flagship product (Monna Smart Bench) has sold a total of 14 copies in the first 20 days - 11 for Canada, 2 for Denmark and 1 for the Croatian Market.
- We also sold 35 Steora smart benches worth over one million kuna (which is already the monthly standard that continues to grow), out of which around 20 are Urban and Urban + (benches that have a display for digital advertising purposes). We seem to be creating a new trend in two industries - street furniture and outdoor digital advertising - by merging them into one and further enhancing it because our benches and campaigns are accessed/managed through our web application.
- We’ve opened in one and a half new markets - Bermuda (officially part of the UK, and a week-long fight to decide who will go to install it) and Poland (a much smaller fight), so we are now in 42 global markets
- We’ve hired new employees - business developers, embedded software developers, python developers (ads can be found at: https://www.include.eu/job_opportunities)
- We have continued media coverage outside of Croatia: https://www.gulf-times.com/story/620188/Aspire-Zone-first-to-introduce-smart-benches-in-GC (installation of three Steora Urban+ benches in Qatar) although it is a mistake to say that these are the first benches in the GCC region - no, there are probably thirty or forty.
For the first twenty days - quite solid.
#onlyexport"
To read more about innovation in Croatia, follow TCN's business page.
