May the 29th, 2023 - A big change has finally been brought in when it comes to the Zagreb public transport network, and the launch of the long awaited Moj ZET app (My ZET) has dragged the ticket purchasing process into the 21st century.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, have you recently noticed the stickers placed in Zagreb's public transport vehicles? The new QR codes on the doors of buses and trams didn't end up being stuck there by accident, and it was actually the sign that the official Moj ZET app was finally on its way to passengers who had until now had to purchase tickets either on board or at iNovine or Tisak kiosks. The new Moj ZET app was officially presented today.

It was tested out by Vecernji list journalists, and here's what passengers using public transport in the capital will be able to do with the Moj ZET app as of today.

To get started, the application must be downloaded for free from the Google Playstore (Android) or the App Store (iOS). For easier use of the application, it's necessary to enable the application to use the location. The location-based app offers tickets that can be purchased in the area where the traveller is currently located.

In order to receive warnings about the imminent expiration of an active ticket, the Moj ZET application must be enabled to send the phone notifications. In addition to that, the application is available in both Croatian and English. In addition to buying tickets, traffic notifications about traffic diversions, ongoing works, temporary issues and other changes can be checked in the application.

After downloading the Moj ZET app, and in order to buy an individual ticket for use in a ZET vehicle, you'll need to top up your eWallet funds with a top up of at least one euro, while the maximum amount you can have on your account at anyone one time is 50 euros.

The new Moj ZET application will display all available maps for the area you're in on the screen (so again, turn your location on!). Selecting the desired map starts the process of reading the QR code. If a controller wants to make sure you've purchased and hold a valid ticket at the time of your travel, go to the Maps menu, in the upper left corner, and select the controller icon. A QR code will be displayed on the screen, which the controller will then read and verify with his device.

For more, check out our news section.

March the 23rd, 2023 - The Croatian company Gepek, which came to life back during the pandemic-dominated year of 2020, has launched a brand new application (app), with which it aims to attract more users throughout this year.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, the Croatian company Gepek, an innovative startup that currently boasts 5,000 users, has announced the launch of its new application aimed at revolutionising the package delivery industry.

With the rise of e-commerce, the demand for fast, environmentally friendly and efficient delivery solutions has never been higher. the Croatian company Gepek, as stated by its founders, aims to respond to the current challenges faced by current delivery companies and provide users with a superior delivery experience.

At the end of last year, the Croatian company Gepek received half a million euros of initial pre-seed investment. The leading investor is John Lilic, one of the investors who, among other things, worked as an advisor to the board of Polygon, the tenth largest blockchain in the entire world. Before that, the Swedish-Hong Kong company Auki Labs, a leader in AR technology, invested in Gepek, which will allow them to expand their activities far beyond national borders using AR technology.

According to Carla Ferreri, the co-founder and CEO of the Croatian company Gepek, their newly launched app offers an end-to-end delivery solution that enables real-time tracking, eco-friendly packaging options and cost-effective pricing. Gepek's innovative approach eliminates intermediaries and fragmentation in the delivery process, making it the ideal solution for all package delivery needs.

“We're thrilled to be able to launch our new app and bring our innovative package delivery solution to the market. Our goal is to provide a superior delivery experience to our users, with savings for those who are sending those packages, and we believe that the new Gepek app is the first step in realising that vision," said brother and sister Carla and Dario Ferreri, the CEOs and co-founders of Gepek.

Kristijan Skarica, another co-founder of Gepek, emphasised that they're now starting a new chapter within Gepek's business and providing a platform that helps connect people with the things they love, whether it's sending gifts to family and friends, supporting local OPGs (Croatian family farms) by transporting their goods to their tables, or simply making life a little easier for working families.

"Our app is available 24/7 unlike traditional delivery companies and is now available for download on the App Store and in the Google Play Store," concluded Skarica.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

March the 12th, 2023 - Izlet hr (izlet.hr) is the very first Croatian field trip app designed for schools and their children. Launched by the Split-based Eklata agency, this new tool will likely be a hit with schools.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, the global coronavirus pandemic contributed to the creation of the very first Croatian application for designing school trips, with which the Split agency Eklata alleviated the problem of a lack of staff and accelerated the process of selecting one-day trips for schoolchildren.

The real breakthrough of the Izlet hr application, which has been on the market since the beginning of this school year, will show itself in just a few days, because the beginning of spring is the traditional time for arranging one-day trips for schoolchildren, and by the beginning of the next school year, a version for multi-day trips, including high school graduates, will be ready.

"We've had this idea for a long time now, because we wanted to speed up and simplify the procedures for designing school trips and offers that will meet demand. As we always strive to be innovative and follow trends in our work, and we've digitised our business to a great extent, a mobile application was a natural sequence. The coronavirus pandemic gave us time to develop our product, which took us about one year, and the app has been available since last autumn.

There was also a trial period in which Izlet hr proved to be very useful and easy to use, but now schools are starting to plan school trips and as such we expect full implementation,'' said Jurica Glavina, the owner of Eklata. The web and mobile application Izlet hr is free and available to everyone, and through it, teachers, parents, and students can independently create an offer for a school trip somewhere in Croatia.

This skips the need for any lengthy communication between the agency and the user as the application is fully automated and the agency's employees are involved only at the last step.

Until then, users can specifically enter all the necessary information about their desired excursion into the app, from the number of passengers and the desired destination to the topic of the trip and the specific content they're interested in, with an overview of service prices.

"After deciding which county you want to go to, you can choose whether the excursion will be out in nature or whether the students want to see cultural and historical sights, visit galleries and museums... You can decide on one or a combination of different content, for example, you can add lunch to the offer. You simply click or "drag&drop" your selections, enter the number of students and you'll immediately find out the price and terms of payment,'' explained Glavina.

With the very next click, an offer is requested, which the app generates independently and which arrives by email in an instant, and by clicking ''accept'', a team of tourism workers, pedagogues and educators start preparing an educational and fun school trop, so it's actually a fully tailor-made service.

Mirko Vukusic from the Split-based company Banica Trade is responsible for the creation of the application, and he took special care to create a maximally simple interface which will be attractive and easy for all generations who decide on school trips. The next step is an expanded application for excursions, which is expected this September, with the beginning of the next school year, but Glavina added that it is a product that can be modified for all other group trips. Eklata doesn't intend to offer this product to other agencies, but will instead use the application for its own services.

Izleti hr has begun work in the first year since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in which the old dynamics of organising school trips are expected to return, although this year will also be challenging due to rising prices and a lack of workers in the sector.

"During the pandemic, many agencies changed things, there are fewer bus operators, and prices have risen, and all of this will affect traffic," concluded Glavina.

For more, check out our news section.

February the 23rd, 2023 - Whoever said that entrepreneurs are doomed when trying something new in Croatia? There's no denying that it is difficult, perhaps more so than in many other EU countries, but Damir Sabol has proved that where there is a will, there's a way. The remarkable Croatian Photomath is being sold to no less than Google.

As Josipa Ban/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Google is buying the genius Croatian Photomath, a company founded back in 2016 by Damir Sabol, which developed an application that solves maths problems. The transaction still needs to be approved by the European regulatory authority for the protection of market competition, and the decision should be made by March the 28th, 2023.

Damir Sabol, founder and director of the Croatian Photomath company, confirmed the transaction recently. "That's right, we've signed an acquisition agreement with Google, but it's subject to regulatory approval. Unfortunately, I can't say anything more until the decision of the regulatory body is known," Sabol said at the time.

Confirmation of the takeover agreement was also given to Reuters by a Google spokesperson, pointing out that they concluded the takeover agreement with Photomath back in May 2022, but he also warned that it remains subject to regulatory review.

He also added that the Croatian Photomath's technology will help Google provide a better mathematics learning experience and expand its overall offer among its young users. Currently, the biggest rival to Photomath on the American market is Microsoft's application for solving mathematical problems.

If the acquisition is approved by the European regulatory body, which is taking an increasingly tough stance on the tech giants, Google would gain a significant advantage over Microsoft. The procedure is such that the transaction, as Reuters explained, is currently in a preliminary audit. If the European Commission recognises a violation of market competition in the acquisition, it can open an investigation, which would last four months. If this doesn't happen, the transaction will probably be approved at the end of March as stated above.

If the transaction is approved, it will probably be the biggest acquisition of a Croatian startup, probably even bigger than that of Nanobit, which the Swedish Stillfront bought in 2020 for 148 million US dollars. Sabol has otherwise been tight lipped about why he decided to sell the company whose application has been downloaded more than 300 million times in six years in the first place.

The investment of two years ago in the amount of 23 million dollars also speaks of the potential of the Croatian Photomath. Menlo Ventures invested in Sabol's company with the participation of GSV Ventures, Learn Capital, Cherubic Ventures and Goodwater Capital, and the money was invested in increasing the number of employees, investing in the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and scaling product development and marketing.

To date, a total of 29 million dollars has been invested in Photomath, and these investments were accompanied by good business results, as Photomath has recorded continuous growth for the past five years. The revenues of the company, the application of which uses a smartphone camera to recognise and solve maths problems, grew 622 percent from 2017 to 2021, from 810,000 to 5.85 million euros. In the same period, profit grew by 557 percent, from 65,000 to 432,000 euros, according to data from the business service Poslovna Hrvatska/Business Croatia. The number of employees increased from 16 to an impressive 91.

The fact remains that Sabol succeeds in successfully developing, but also successfully selling the companies to which he dedicates himself. This was also the case with Iskon, one of the first Croatian companies that provided Internet services, which he founded just after graduating from college, at the age of 26. In the end, Iskon was sold to Hrvatski Telekom/Croatian Telecom for 100 million kuna (13.2 million euros), which was the most successful sale of a domestic startup ever back at the time.

With the Croatian Photomath company, Sabol could quite easily repeat this scenario, that is, once again realise one of the largest financial transactions on the domestic technology scene ever. His successes are a reflection of the philosophy he lives by. In a big interview that he gave to Poslovni dnevnik back in 2015, he talked about how he walked to work in Iskon for the first three years.

"I didn't have an official car. I leased 60 modems instead. In business, you can't allow yourself to spend irrationally on personal needs, first of all, everything should be focused on the development of the company," he said at the time.

After Iskon, he successfully developed the company Microblink, which deals with the development of mobile document scanners.

Photomath was created as its spin-off. At the end of 2020, Microblink received an investment from Silversmith Capital Partners in the amount of 60 million US dollars, with which the market evaluation of Microblink exceeded a massive 1 billion kuna. Not long after that sale, Sabol retired from the management position and today has an advisory role in that company as a co-owner. In addition to all of the above, the entrepreneur who was among the first on the market to recognise the importance of cameras on mobile phones and the opportunities that were to come of that, is also known as an investor.

Investing in STEMI, Marin Troselj's School of the Future/Skola buducnosti, is just one example of an investment. FER's Nuqleus programme was also included, in which it participates as part of the investment committee, and should help young startups with its advice. Another wildly successful business under Damir Sabol's rule is therefore at a turning point, and what his role will be within Photomath if the European competition authority approves the transaction and the company ends up in the hands of the powerful Google, is yet to be learned.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

November the 3rd, 2022 - A very special application (app) by the Croatian startup Spiritus is turning graveyards into virtual museums, telling the stories of those lying at rest there.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Mladen Miletic writes, a team of Croatian tech experts from the Zagreb startup Spiritus has designed an application that turns cemeteries across the Republic of Croatia into virtual museums, and it has already attracted more than three million kuna in investments intended to expand this heartfelt idea to other European markets.

Through the application, the families of the deceased can write stories about their lives, as well as receive photo suggestions or stories about their loved ones that they may not have even known about. The Spiritus application was premiered in Vukovar, and on October the 31st, 2022, it arrived at almost all major cemeteries in the country.

"We've been preparing the project for more than a year now, and we hope that it will be recognised and supported by people. There are so many untold and inspiring life stories that we want to preserve for our descendants," explained Spiritus director Dino Jerkovic.

So far, the application has more than 700,000 memorials spanning more than 50 city cemeteries loaded into it, from Vukovar to Zagreb, Varazdin, Osijek, Karlovac and Split.

"We believe that every person who has ever lived has at least one story worth telling. These are often wonderful and inspiring life stories that will be forgotten over generations. We want to find such stories and enable families to keep hold of them forever," added Dino Jerkovic.

"We'd like to thank our previous partners for recognising the potential of this project and we're looking forward to future collaborations. The goal is that every family in Croatia has the opportunity to preserve the memories of their loved ones through technology. Pictures, stories and biographical information can remain indelible on the Internet, in fact they're eternal. As such, the memories of our grandparents can remain for all generations. Of course, we do check all of the content placed there. It's very important to us that all of the content on Spiritus is dignified and respectful of the deceased," concluded Jerkovic.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

February the 2nd, 2022 - The Croatian Photomath app has been a roaring success, having gained a lot of recognition very quickly. The team behind it have now launched an interesting engineering blog on the popular blogging platform Medium.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the Croatian Photomath app has launched an engineering blog on Medium, an online platform with more than 100 million readers, where all those interested in getting better acquainted, as they say, "with life in the company" and everything they work on, can read about the ins and outs.

The creator of the Croatian Photomath app which works to help solve mathematical problems has announcing that they have something new in the works for months now, and their blogging project has now seen the light of day.

“We wanted to create a space where we can share our knowledge and experience with the community and show how, why and what engineers at Photomath do. We're going to write about how we work on our products, projects and technologies, and we can expect stories about #LifeAtPhotomath and interesting engineering topics at least twice a month,'' they announced from Photomath.

They currently have twelve active authors, and training is being prepared for a dozen more. So far, five topics have been published.

In one of the texts, Petar Alilovic, Android Tech Lead, presented Photomath's current news, revealing, among other things, that the users of the application are not only students but also parents and teachers. Last year, 5 percent more parents and 13 percent more teachers used this impressive maths app.

Among students, it is most often used by high school graduates, but it seems that after high school they stop using it, unless they choose a profession related to mathematics. According to data from last year, the Croatian Photomath app has been downloaded more than 220 million times worldwide, of which ten million users use the application every single day for various purposes.

According to Photomath's founder, Damir Sabol, the market potential is in a billion students who have to learn mathematics during their mandatory education and sometimes beyond it. Their largest market is across the pond over in the USA, followed by Russia, Italy, Brazil and Indonesia, while here in Croatia, they interestingly don't have as many users as they have abroad.

Last February, the Croatian Photomath app secured a massive 23 million US dollar investment from the American fund Menlo Ventures to further develop the app.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

November the 26th, 2021 - The Croatian PlantOn app allows its users to access their garden ''in their palm'' from wherever they might be.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, Goran Markovanovic and Mario Salai from Slavonia created the Croatian PlantOn app, which provides its customers and producers with a "garden in the palm of your hand" experience, with direct connections between the user and the grower permitted with ease.

The user of the Croatian PlantOn app is directly connected to the producer from whom they have rented the garden, while the same producer grows vegetables for the user and sends them all of the crops from their garden to their home address.

By paying for the service, the buyer provides farmers with a fixed monthly income throughout the year, and the family does not have to worry about the placement and sale of their vegetables.

“The Croatian PlantOn app also opens up new employment opportunities for local farmers, and better quality control and product quantity planning reduces the risk of overproduction, unnecessary production and food waste. When a user asks to rent a garden, they can do so even when planting has only just begun, so the crop can be already fully sold, which provides family farms with security and additional motivation, and direct delivery ensures the better hygiene and freshness of the vegetables. The PlantOn system enables income to be kept in the hands of the ''small'' people, who will retain purchasing power and improve the economy of the more rural parts of Croatia,'' said Markovanovic.

All activities from the field are available to tenants via the Croatian PlantOn app so they can see their garden at any time. In this way, the customer gets healthy, locally grown foods easily and they even know exactly how they've been grown and where they've come from.

As Markovanovic and Salai added, the delivery of fresh vegetables from Slavonia and Baranja gardens is possible to all parts of Croatia. They have three packages - Family (eight types of vegetables), Custom (the buyer chooses everything down to the last bit) or Business, which is intended only for business entities (this is done only with large areas with the cultivation of crops of choice). In addition to growing vegetables, the app also offers seasonal nutrition tips and different recipes.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

November the 26th, 2021 - The large shopping chain NTL (Narodni trgovacki lanac) has been testing out the innovative new Croatian ScanShop app in its stores.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the NTL chain is starting to test out the Croatian ScanShop app in its stores, which allows the customer to independently scan the desired items in the store via their own mobile phone and thus skip the queues for the cash register. This is a practice already common in some large Northern European chains, such as the British Tesco.

The Croatian ScanShop app allows shoppers more time to select their products instead of standing and waiting in lines at the checkout, it reduces frustration for the customer and makes the experience more positive in general. It also provides the user with personalised content based on their shopping list and previous purchases, as well as all information about the product(s) or various promotions in individual stores.

"We're glad to have the opportunity to be the first to test out an innovative Croatian product and check the technical and operational possibilities for its implementation. With the support of small technological start-up companies, our goal is certainly to provide our customers with even greater customer satisfaction. The introduction of the Croatian ScanShop app potentially opens the possibility for the better use of the time of our employees so that they, instead of at the checkout, are at the service of customers when they're shopping and are actually choosing products,'' said the director of NTL, Martin Evacic.

As part of a European Union (EU) project, the Croatian ScanShop app has reached a stage where it is ready for use in stores, but continued testing in real conditions is a necessary prerequisite for the further development of the application to reach its full potential.

"We're happy that NTL has recognised us as a possible partner and allowed us to test out our application in real conditions. In this phase, the Croatian ScanShop app development team improve things with the support of NTL employees, and we hope that the knowledge from the test phase will enable ScanShop to progress even more, and with the support of investors, it will be available to the general public and as many stores as possible,'' said Luka Buljan on behalf of the technology team developing the application.

The development of the application was supported by European Union funds, which emphasises the financing of radical innovations with the potential for success. The total value of the project was 1.6 million kuna, of which EU funds financed 85 percent.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

25 June 2021 – Dubrovnik Marin Med Polyclinic released an app that allows people to order COVID-19 testing.

Travelling in the time of the pandemic has been interesting and sometimes quite frustrating. The situation in 2021 is much better than the previous year, but there are still some hoops that need jumping through in order to get to your dream vacation. One of the most important things to consider when travelling is the need for COVID19 testing. In Dubrovnik, Marin Med Polyclinic is one of the most efficient and hassle-free places where you can do this. Now, they’ve made the entire process even easier by developing a mobile app that enables people to sign up for testing remotely. The name of the app is fit4traveldubrovnik and it is the first of its kind in Croatia.

How Does it Work?

The majority of guests coming to Dubrovnik will need to take an official COVID test before flying back home. By using fit4traveldubrovnik you streamline the process of acquiring proof of being COVID-free before your trip. The app enables users to schedule the testing and choose from the available testing locations. You also pay for the testing through the app. Within a maximum of 24 hours, you will receive the test results via email.

Marin Med has set up a new testing spot in front of Dubrovnik’s Grawe Building in the business district of Gruz. This way, the testing is done in an easy and fast manner without the need for entering the building. Dr. Rikard Lenz, the director of Marin Med emphasised the entire process of scheduling testing, paying, and receiving results can be done via the app, making in-person visits needed only for the actual testing. In fact, with the outdoor testing spot now available, persons in need of a COVID test need to generally spend just a few seconds, up to a minute at the testing site. This makes the entire process not just very fast, but also extremely safe. For more information on getting tested for COVID19 in Dubrovnik, check out the official website of Marin Med.

For all you need to know about coronavirus specific to Croatia check out our COVID-19 section and select your language.

May the 10th, 2021 - The Croatian Aircash app has been gaining inpopularity, and that will more than likely continue to occur as the app allows its users to pay only half the price of a parking ticket, which is something commonly received throughout Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the Croatian Aircash app is a revolutionary way of sending and receiving money in the Croatians sense. It cuts out paying for a large number of services by making it available in one single click and bypasses all the shortcomings of banks, from standing in linse, entering numerous pieces of information and waiting for the money to "reach" the recipient.

Avoiding all of the headache that the often outdated process in banks cause has been offered by this Croatian app, which is otherwise the very first digital wallet and the country's fastest growing fintech with more than 150,000 active users who have a monthly turnover of more than 150 million kuna.

As an electronic money institution (IES), the Croatian Aircash app is licensed by the Croatian National Bank (HNB/CNB) to operate in accordance with all laws of Croatia and the European Union. Today, they're constantly among the top three apps in their segment on the Apple AppStore and Google Play Store, and recently Aircash was recognised by Huawei Croatia with its addition to the AppGallery store, which has 500 million active users per month worldwide, which Aircash sees as a great opportunity due to the large number of Huawei users in Croatia.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the number of Aircash users who were provided with contactless payment for various services such as sending money, paying bills, parking, telecom vouchers, the top-up of ENC devices and the like was only increasing. Aircash business manager Damir Smigmator says that 2020 has shown how digital wallets are becoming more recognisable because people want fast, secure and easy payment that guarantees privacy. Research shows that the transition to digital payment methods could lead to the re-establishment of balance in the global economy. The novelty they introduced to the Croatian market is the possibility for payment at PBZ ATMs without the need for accounts held there and without cards, which proved to be a big hit.

“In the Croatian Aircash app, the user requests a payment at a PBZ ATM, after which they receive a unique code (OTP - one time password) for the payment, which they then enter at any PBZ ATM and they can then securely withdraw that money. With all these locations, payment is possible to any bank account opened in a Croatian bank with one click from the app,'' explained Smigmator. The average age of an Aircash user is around 30, and they're especially proud because their mobile wallet is also used by older people too.

The Croatian Aircash app story started back in 201, when after the original idea came to be, the development and study of often complex CNB regulations began. Just one year later, they received a license from the Payment Institution (IPP). The quality of their service was then first recognised by INA, which enabled users to send and receive money with a quick payment throughout the Republic of Croatia, which at the time, stated Smigmator, was an absolute novelty on the market.

“We've noticed some shortcomings when it comes to IPP that have started to limit us when doing business, especially in the planned entry into the EU market. We concluded that we want to offer customers across Croatia and the entire EU a better experience, so we started a change in the Electronic Money Institution (IES), which we got at the end of 2019. As we grew in terms of our business, so did our number of employees. At the moment, there are 25 of us, we're all highly educated and we like to say professional in the work we do,'' said Smigmator.

In addition to INA and PBZ, they have established cooperation with many successful companies out there on the market, in various spheres of business. The Croatian Aircash app is readily available at all petrol stations in the country (INA, Tifon), at all Tisak and iNovine kiosks, users can buy Playstation and telecom vouchers for all teleoperators in Croatia (Telemach, HT, A1, Tomato and Bonbon) and much more. It is also interesting that almost 20 percent of their users don't even live in Croatia, and most Croats who work and live abroad use Aircash to send money to their families or to pay for various bills and utilities.

Aircash is entering the EU market too, first to Germany, Austria and then to neighbouring Slovenia.

For more, follow Made in Croatia.