August, the 3rd, 2021 - The Croatian Koncar Group (Grupa) has seen quite the increase in terms of net profit in the first six months of 2021, despite the previous and continued obstacles caused by the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic.

As Novac writes, in the first half of the year, the well known Croatian Koncar Group generated an impressive net profit of 74.3 million kuna, which is an increase of 41.2 million kuna or 124.3 percent when compared to the same period last year, according to the company's financial report published on Thursday.

"The Croatian Koncar Group ended the first half of 2021 with excellent results and all key business indicators show growth compared to the same period last year," said Gordan Kolak, President of the Management Board of Koncar Elektroindustrija, in a comment on the aforementioned financial report.

In that period, consolidated operating revenues grew by 18.3 percent to 1.6 billion kuna.

According to the data from the financial report, the companies operating under the wider umbrella of the large Croatian Koncar Group generated consolidated revenues from the sale of products and services in the amount of 1.6 billion kuna in the first half of the year, which is 251.9 million kuna or 18.8 percent more than in the same period last year.

Revenues here on the Croatian market amounted to 609.5 million kuna, which is 37.3 percent more, while revenues from sales to foreign markets increased by 9.6 percent, to 983.6 million kuna. Thus, the share of exports in total revenues from sales of products and services stands at 61.7 percent.

The most significant exports were realised on the demanding German market, amounting to 181.6 million kuna or 18.5 percent of total exports, followed by Sweden, to which goods and services were exported in the amount of 145.4 million kuna or 14.8 percent of total exports, and then Austria with 78.8 million kuna or 8 percent of total exports.

Koncar pointed out that in addition to sales, excellent financial results were achieved - EBITDA amounted to 129.7 million kuna and was higher by 46 million kuna when compared to the first half of last year, and their EBITDA margin amounted to 8.1 percent (in the same period last year it stood at 6.2 percent).

Operating profit amounted to 81.3 million kuna, while the Croatian Koncar Group's net consolidated result amounted to 74.3 million kuna, which is 41.2 million kuna more than in the same period last year.

In the first half of the year, the companies of the wider Koncar Group contracted new business (contracts) in the amount of 2.2 billion kuna, which is 691.8 million kuna or 46.5 percent more new business compared to last year. Of the total amount of contracted work, 956 million kuna (43.9 percent of the total contracted work) was contracted for the domestic market, and 1.12 billion kuna (56.1 percent of the total contracted work) referred to export contracts.

The backlog at the end of June amounted to 4.8 billion kuna, which is 13.8 percent more than at the beginning of the year.

The sales revenue plan is fully covered by the contracted works, and by the end of the year, the contracting of new works for realisation in 2022 and the following years is expected. At the end of the first half of the year, the backlog for realisation in the following years amounts to 3 billion kuna, it is stated.

The further growth of newly contracted business in the first half of the year, the balance of contracted business (backlog) and the growth of all business indicators are a reflection of a series of activities undertaken by the Croatian Koncar Group in this very complex economic situation, said Kolak.

He also pointed out that in an environment that still contains many uncertainties related to the coronavirus pandemic, they have shown resilience and focus on business partners, employees, production and commercial activities and are satisfied with what has been achieved in the first six months of this business year.

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August the 2nd, 2021 - The company Varazdin City Connect from Northern Croatia has done remarkably well for such a young company, and has now become part of the Swedish Transcom company.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, the Swedish company Transcom, which entered the Croatian market fourteen years ago in parallel with Tele2, to which it provided call centre services from Vukovar, has taken over Varazdin City Connect. While the value of the takeover hasn't yet been announced, Transcom’s plan going forward has. Its goal is to position itself as the leading BPO service provider here in the wider Adriatic region.

The acquired company, Varazdin City Connect, became quite popular in Croatia in a short amount of time. It is a very young company that is growing so quickly that it is being hailed as ''Varazdin's Infobip'' - a true mark of success when one considers what the actual Infobip from Vodnjan has achieved.

the Varazdin City Connect company was founded back in 2019, and in its first year of operation alone, it had revenue of 1 million US dollars and a net profit of 328,589 dollars. Last year, it generated revenue of just over 7 million dollars and a net profit of 4.7 million dollars. This year, however, the company expects to generate revenue of nearly 18 million dollars with double-digit net profit growth.

In addition, the Varazdin City Connect company grew to 425 employees last year, of which 340 are located right here in Croatia. Now, in the middle of 2021, thar figure is even higher, with 620 employees, both in Croatia and in nearby Macedonia and neighbouring Slovenia.

Marko Dagelic, President of the Supervisory Board of City Connect, says that their business with the Swedish company Transcom is extremely good.

''The current owners and management of the Varazdin City Connect company have entered into the co-ownership of Transcom and took over the management of Transcom's positions in the Adriatic region, and with this business move, Transcom has become the dominant BPO service provider with more than 3,000 employees,'' explained Dagelic.

He stated that this was a key reason for the acquisition, as it will allow for greater and easier growth and better service delivery to global clients, as well as greater availability of labour and language skills.

Transcom stated that the Varazdin City Connect company is an enterprise specialising in omnichannel user experience and has a strong presence on the German market. The largest number of its clients are listed companies and fast-growing e-commerce companies.

Jonas Dahlberg, President and CEO of Transcom, said that Transcom has significantly improved profitability over the years, developed a strong digital offering and is now growing rapidly in attractive segments such as e-commerce and technology.

''The German market is now our strategic priority and we're continuously strengthening our operations to support the high demand for our services. By partnering with City Connect, we're further strengthening our ability to thrive on the German market,'' noted Dahlberg.

Dagelic from the Varazdin City Connect company added that from their perspective, business is good because of the similar cultures and values ​​shared by Transcom and City Connect, but also because they complement each other.

''With Transcom's well-managed operations in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, we now have a presence throughout the region and additional resources to provide superior services throughout the Adriatic region, serving not only the German market but also large multilingual and international clients,'' said Dagelic, adding that as part of this move, they didn't sell the project of the previously announced future data centre in Varazdin.

Namely, they announced the construction of a data centre of 2000 square metres, the largest such facility in all of Croatia. That part of the business is now under the auspices of Cratis, which was partly linked to City Connect through management and partly through actual ownership.

''These are now separate stories,'' stated Dagelic.

the Varazdin City Connect company boasts a wide variety of services in the field of telecommunications and software, hence the association with the incredible Infobip, which it actually has nothing to do with at all. City Connect is building virtual telecommunications networks for customers, which is something telecoms normally do. Furthermore, it deals with the installation and connection of software, such as system integrators, then the contact centre, and even consults its clients on how to carry out the digital transformation they need. In any case, this is a successful company that stands out from the usual classifications.

''With a new opportunity to expand our current portfolio, we'll continue to provide flexible, agile and top service to our clients,'' concluded Dagelic.

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July the 29th, 2021 - The government introduced job preservation measures in an attempt to tackle the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic and all of the related lockdowns throughout 2020. When it comes to micro and small Croatian enterprises, the amounts paid out to keep their heads above water are generous indeed.

As Jadranka Dozan/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, according to the daily "barometer" of the Croatian Employment Service (CES), there are currently 126,175 unemployed persons officially registered as such across Croatia, which is slightly less than were officially registered back at the beginning of the month.

The latest available data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute for the month of June this year confirmed this positive continuation of employment growth.

According to the CBS, there were a total of 1.56 million employees across Croatia in the middle of the year, and the number of insured persons reached 1.6 million, recording the fourth month of consecutive growth when compared to last year.

In addition to domestic economic recovery, these developments are also influenced by the aforementioned measures to preserve jobs (ORM) introduced shortly after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. From last March to the end of May this year, 11.05 billion kuna in aid for was paid out to companies.

Of that amount - and in addition to co-financing the payment of salaries, the measure of compensation of fixed costs introduced at the end of last year has also been included - standing at 8.24 billion kuna which was paid last year, and 2.81 billion kuna which was paid out during the first five months of this year. Most of the money from these measures in the past 15 months, about 5.3 billion kuna of it, was directed to micro Croatian enterprises (with up to 10 employees), and a further 20 percent ended up going to small Croatian enteprises (which have between 11 and 50 employees).

As opposed to small Croatian enterprises, for the purpose of preserving jobs, less than 1.8 billion kuna was diverted to medium and large enterprises. Both the amount and the number of workers covered by these measures are now gradually decreasing.

For more, make sure to follow our dedicated business section.

July the 27th, 2021 - Although the title might sound rather funny, Croatian zombie companies are not only no laughing matter but are only increasing in their numbers as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Jadranka Dozan writes, despite a certain degree of domestic economic recovery and a better macroeconomic outlook, which also reduces short-term risks in the corporate sector, structural vulnerabilities in Croatia and overall exposure to systemic risks remain elevated, according to the Croatian National Bank (CNB).

The risks to the resolvability of companies whose operations were disrupted during the pandemic are especially emphasised, and that same magnifying glass also includes high and rising real estate prices and their, as they said from the CNB, "further separation from the foundations".

The combination of the vaccination progress and the mitigation of epidemiological measures should support the continuation of economic recovery throughout 2021, the new edition of Macroprudential Diagnostics points out, although the risk of increasing Croatian zombie companies remains.

Epidemiological variables such as new strains/mutations of the novel coronavirus, a slower vaccination rollout, or potential vaccine ineffectiveness are also a source of uncertainty for the further course of economic recovery. This is especially true for tourism and other activities more exposed to the effects of such a public health crisis.

Despite the overall better performance of entrepreneurship, risks and vulnerabilities remain elevated as a result of the ongoing situation, which while better, is less than favourable.

Among other things, things all depend on the effectiveness and duration (expiration) of the measures to mitigate the effects of the ongoing global pandemic on liquidity and solvency. In the acute phase of the coronavirus crisis, these risks were mitigated by very generous public sector assistance packages and the adjustment of supervisory rules to try to treat banks' exposure to affected clients.

Due to the still present uncertainties, the risk of the so-called zombification that may adversely affect the operations of banks, but also economic growth in the long run.

"As long as the support measures last, credit losses related to the corporate sector will remain low, but after their expiration, and especially due to the reduction of the capital of companies operating within sectors most exposed to the effects of the pandemic, there could be an increase in risk," warns the CNB .

Data on the fiscalisation of accounts clearly shows the recovery of revenues, but compared to pre-crisis 2019, they are still lagging behind, primarily in the activities most affected by the coronavirus crisis.

These companies, primarily those in tourism and transport (to a lesser extent also from the manufacturing industry), continue to rely on their own accumulated liquidity, the CNB notes. As of the end of May this year, these activities were in the lead with a percentage drop in deposits at the beginning of this year. At the same time, credit data shows that part of the liquidity deficit is being compensated for by additional borrowing.

The share of loans under the moratorium, on the other hand, is gradually declining, and at the same time, exposure to corporate loans in the so-called phase two, which is estimated to increase credit risk at the end of March rose to 22.7 percent.

With the gradual expiration of the moratorium, and especially if the recovery of the economy weakens, the CNB notes that the materialisation of credit risk in this segment could further burden the operations of banks and do nothing to help the increasing number of Croatian zombie companies across heavily affected sectors.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.

July the 24th, 2021 - The Croatian company Podravka has managed to achieve 197 million kuna in net profit, despite all of the issues caused by the ongoing pandemic.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the net profit of the Croatian company Podravka in the first half of this year reached an impressive 197.6 million kuna, which is 22.3 percent more than in the same period last year, the company announced on Thursday.

At today's meeting, the Supervisory Board of Podravka confirmed the unaudited results of the Podravka Group's operations for the first half of the year, expressing "satisfaction and support for all efforts made to continue the company's continued profitability growth in these still difficult business conditions caused by the coronavirus pandemic,'' in a statement.

In the first half of the year, the Nutrition segment generated a net profit of 136.3 million kuna, which is 13.9 percent more than the year before, while the Pharmaceuticals segment generated a net profit of 61.3 million kuna, or 46.3 percent more, which doesn't come as a shock considering the global public health crisis we're still embedded in.

The Croatian company Podravka's sales revenue in the first half of the year amounted to 2.2 billion kuna and was one percent lower when compared to the comparable period of 2020.

The expected decline in sales revenue compared to 2020 is actually the result of unusually large orders and the creation of additional stocks with customers in March last year caused by the introduction of lockdown in most countries where the Podravka Group operates, the statement said.

It is also stated that when, for example, the total sales revenues from the first half of this year are compared with the comparable period of pre-pandemic 2019, then revenues are actually 4 percent higher, which shows positive trends for the company's business operations.

Within the Nutrition segment, the largest increase in sales revenue in the first half of the year was achieved in the Culinary business programme in the amount of 2.5 percent.

The Croatian company Podravka points out that the business programme(s) Baby Food, Sweets and Snacks also recorded an increase in sales revenue in the amount of 1.7 percent, while the growth in sales revenue was also recorded in the Podravka food segment, in the amount of 2.4 percent.

In the Pharmaceuticals segment, the largest growth was recorded in the Prescription Drugs category, whose sales revenues increased by 4.3 percent when compared to the first half of 2020.

When observing sales revenues by region, within the Food segment from Podravka, point out the growth of sales revenues in the markets of Western Europe and overseas in the amount of 8.2 percent when compared to the comparable period last year.

In these markets, sales growth was achieved in almost all business programmes, of which the largest absolute growth was generated by the business programmes Culinary, Baby food, sweets and snacks and Podravka food.

The Pharmaceuticals segment achieved the largest relative growth in sales revenue of 13.9 percent within the Central Europe region, due to higher sales in the Prescription Drugs category, the statement said.

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July the 23rd, 2021 - The Croatian company Asura has contracted a very valuable job in the Macedonian city of Skopje, more precisely in the country's largest shopping centre which promises to be a hit - East Gate Mall.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Darko Bicak writes, Asura Facility Management Skopje, a member of the Croatian Asura Group, signed an agreement recently in the city of Skopje on the management services of the East Gate Mall, which is the largest shopping centre, as they point out, not only in North Macedonia, but also among the largest in Southeastern Europe.

Through a multi-year Business Cooperation Agreement, signed by East Gate Mall CEO Igor Davkov and Asura Macedonia CEO Stefan Handjiski, the Croatian company Asura will provide all of the needed integrated facility maintenance services.

The service includes technical services (the planning, care and maintenance of all technical systems) and infrastructure facility management (cleaning, environmental maintenance and physical and technical protection).

This cooperation will result in the creation of more than 160 new jobs in the field of technical correctness, cleanliness and physical protection of the facility, it was pointed out during the signing of the contract.

The shopping centre otherwise has 57 thousand square metres of space for shopping, and at the same location investors are developing a business park within which there will be 50,000 m2 of office space, as well as a residential part with a gross area covering ​​more than 200,000 m2 with 1,600 apartments.

The project will be surrounded by 25 thousand square metres of green space and will be open to visitors in mid-October 2021. Andrej Mandic, President of the Management Board of Asura Group, pointed out that the signed contract is the result of strong synergy work of their team despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.

July the 23rd, 2021 - The Zagreb company Pri Suncu is definitely a hit among all those engaged in a constant and often losing battle with a sweet tooth. This father and daughter team are all about Italian ice cream, sorbet and more.

As Ivan Tominac/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Nina and Mario Saric are a father and daughter team whose family business, the Zagreb company Pri Suncu, has firmly won over all the palates of Croatian confectionery lovers, and the focus of their business story is the production of original Italian ice cream. It all started while Nina was still in her teens.

She learned about the traditional way of preparing and producing the globally adored Italian type of ice cream, and her urge was so strong that after finishing her food technology studies, she decided to start a business with her father, and that's how the Zagreb company Pri Suncu came to be.

“About three years ago, when we started intensively preparing to start a business, a common realisation grew in us that told us that what we want to do is be authentic and ultimately produce and offer people a product about which they'll say: That’s it! Establishing a new philosophy and raising people's awareness of ''real'' original Italian ice cream, even if they call it ''craft ice cream'' is our business mission,'' said Nina's father and one of the co-founders of the Zagreb company Pri Suncu, Mario Saric

Passion and motivation were the key ingredients, and in order to bridge the whole path between which leads to success, they invested around one million kuna. In addition to their own funds, the CES self-employment support and a micro investment loan from HAMAG BICRO helped them greatly in getting their business up on its feet.

That amount helped them enter the market with even more confidence, and with a well-researched market today, they're ready to say what their main advantage is.

"The production and sale of ice cream is growing from year to year, but the vast majority of ice cream produced is industrial, which can't be produced with the technology and ingredients that produce good craft ice cream. We opted for the manual production of ice cream, during which we make the ice cream base ourselves, and then add other ingredients to it, depending on the flavours of the ice cream. As such, our ice cream has a much stronger flavour intensity and a creamier texture which also gives a lighter feeling after consumption. All of our milk flavours (except tiramisu) are gluten-free and egg-free, while all of our fruit sorbets are intended for a vegan diet, because they're produced on the basis of water,'' added Nina.

The inscriptions ''craft'', ''artisan'' or ''gelato artigianale'' on industrially produced ice cream mean nothing but are merely an enticing PR message to insufficiently educated customers. According to the pair, real ice cream is a miniature niche and as such represents an opportunity, but also a risk that has a focus placed on looking for professional staff.

''Here on the Croatian labour market, at least when it comes to ice cream, confectioners trained to prepare ice cream in the classic industrial way predominate, which is an important problem when it comes to employment in production. In addition, the sale of ice cream in Croatia has a strong seasonal impact, so for a small company like ours it doesn't matter whether we produce it in the winter or summer.

Finally, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has brought additional uncertainty and oscillations to the market, making it difficult to plan for production volumes. For these reasons, we've decided to employ people in production according to our current needs, mostly for a certain period of time, until the market conditions allow us a different approach to this key premise for the development of any business,'' explained owners of the Zagreb company Pri Suncu.

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July the 22nd, 2021 - Five Croatian company owners are seeking not only answers but compensation for their extreme losses incurred owing to lockdowns and limitations from the Croatian Civil Protection Directorate.

As Novac/Gordana Grgas writes, five Croatian company owners are refusing to let this issue drop as their very existence was threatened during the pandemic. As such, they have filed a lawsuit against the state seeking compensation for what they claim are discriminatory decisions by the Civil Protection Directorate and inadequate economic measures introduced by the government, funded and logistically supported by the Voice of Entrepreneurs Association (UGP).

The amount they're asking for in court hasn't yet been publicly stated, and they say that it was calculated in relation to the turnover and profit that each of the companies had back during pre-pandemic 2019. The Croatian companies in question are "Djurina hiza" from Varazdin, Caffe & Wine Bar from Rijeka, the travel agencies "Svi koncerti/All concerts" from Varazdin, "Locuples" from the vicinity of Split and the Shark Attack trade from Primosten.

The first step in the lawsuit against the state for damages is a request from the Croatian company owners to attempt to come to a peaceful solution, which was sent to the Zagreb County State's Attorney's Office, it was said yesterday at a press conference organised by the UGP. As explained by the Matic and partners law firm who decided to take these cases, this means that within the legal deadline of three months "the state has a good chance to find modalities and an adequate solution." In other words, they believe that lawsuits shouldn't be filed with the competent courts if the state decides to settle in another manner.

Although the Constitutional Court has so far confirmed in its opinions that the measures adopted due to the pandemic were in accordance with the Constitution, lawyer Mato Matic believes that the Civil Protection Directorate directly violated the constitutional rights of Croatian company owners and states that there are serious violations of three articles of the Constitution (49, 50 and 54).

''Who exactly are those behind the Civil Protection Directorate? On what basis did they make thirteen decisions? On the basis of nothing,'' stated Matic, explaining that the state should have announced the introduction of a state of emergency so that the aforementioned group could make decisions, and noted that President Zoran Milanovic once spoke about it. Thus, Matic believes, there was no legal basis for these decisions to have been made, and no research has ever been conducted to suggest otherwise.

What the aforementioned law firm considers to be important is that judgments have been passed in several EU countries in support of such arguments, stating that the Spanish Constitutional Court declared the spring 2020 lockdown illegal, and the Belgian courts in Brussels declared the ban on the work of caterers and those in the hospitality industry to be illegal. They also cite the decision of the General Court of the European Union, which, as they say, interprets that everything that is prohibited or restricted for Croatian company owners by the decisions of the Government and the Civil Protection Directorate should be compensated in some way.

Hrvoje Bujas, the president of UGP, says that the lawsuits of the group's members are far from a bluff and says that the "gentlemen in the government" should take them very seriously. He emphasises that these are companies that were doing very well until the outbreak of the pandemic, and "became ruins" through absolutely no fault of their own.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.

July the 18th, 2021 - Innovative and unique Croatian startups keep on popping up all over the place, and the Croatian startup airt is just another in a line of impressive companies. This startup has presented a brand new learning algorithm.

As Novac/Ljubica Vuko writes, the Croatian startup airt, founded by Hajdi Cenan and Davor Runje, presented a new algorithm for learning and predicting behaviour from structured data, which is most often used in the business world, and applied for a patent for its global protection.

As they explained, the Croatian startip airt is building a platform for creating predictive models based on structured data such as, for example, that held by banks or communication service providers, and to process this data internally developed their own deep learning techniques inspired by methodologies used in language processing (NLP/Natural Language Processing).

They used their prior experience they had of working on specific problems from the financial sector to build a fully automated platform for the preparation of the transaction of the data and an automated model building for specific business problems.

In order to compare the quality of the platform, they decided to test and compare it with TabFormer, a system for the same purpose developed by IBM and for which it publicly published a synthetic data set for its testing. The initial test showed that the Airt model surpasses IBM's (F1-score 0.90 vs. 0.86). However, although the accuracy of the model prediction is important, they emphasise that it isn't the most important item for them.

''We believe we can do better than this result in terms of accuracy, but our primary focus isn't on making the most accurate and precise model, but on reducing the resources needed to build one such model automatically. The greatest successes of deep learning techniques have been achieved in the fields of image and text processing, and to make only one such top model requires thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for the electricity used to make them,'' said Davor Runje.

He added that for such applications, it isn't a big problem because one model is enough for each language, however, when it comes to (many) models used in business, it is clear that there are few companies that could afford something like that.

''Our goal is to achieve almost identical results as these expensive models, but for much less money in order to make our solution available to everyone, from the smallest web shop to the largest financial institutions,'' said Runje.

With this approach, the Croatian startup airt has entered the "deep tech" domain, because the solution they're developing is based on significant scientific and engineering challenges.

''We're intensively engaged in research in and developing our own approaches and techniques. It was with the wholehearted help of Mladen Vukmir and William Zupancic from Vukmir & Associates that we submitted our first patent, which first goes to the EPO (European Patent Office), and then to the USA, for our own deep learning techniques on structured data. This is just the beginning because we aren't going to stop innovating,'' said Heidi Chenan.

The co-founders of "airt'' will also say that with this approach and innovation they are trying to improve the side of deep learning that isn't talked about too much yet, and that is the impact on the environment.

They say modern AI models consume an extremely large amount of energy. The computing resources needed to create the best models are increasing exponentially, doubling every 3.4 months, that is, in other words, in the period from 2012 to 2018, they increased as much as 300 thousand times.

''We're aware of the trace that deep learning leaves on ecology and how, if this trend continues, this technology can become an opponent in the fight against climate change. Therefore, we're working intensively to ensure that our system, in addition to scaling to the amount and speed, uses as little computer resources and energy as possible to process these large amounts of data,'' explained Cenan.

It's worth adding that digital transformation is one of the European Union's top priorities.

For more, follow Made in Croatia.

July the 16th, 2021 - The Split company GetByBus has made a new business move and will become part of the wider Israeli Bookaway Group.

As Novac/Ljubica Vuko writes, the Split company GetByBus sold its very first online bus ticket back in late March 2014, it was the only ticket sold that day. By the end of 2014, they had sold a total of about 25,000 tickets. The number of tickets sold grew from year to year, the number of bus carriers and countries where their services were available increased. Now they've reached an important milestone which means new growth and employment in becoming part of the Israeli Bookaway Group. The acquisition was recently completed.

''It's important for us that our brand GetByBus, which is recognised on the market, remains as it is, but that we also continue to develop using the resources of the Bookaway Group, its financial and logistical support. In all this, it's important to hire young people who have the opportunity to work and live in Split and provide services to customers around the world,'' say the leading people of this company.

The Split company GetByBus was founded by Dane Morten Smalby, who has been living in Dalmatia with his family for seventeen years. Initially, it was a website where information on bus routes in Croatia could be found, until the demand for online reservations spurred the success of the platform.

The co-founders of GetByBus are also Vivian Luksic, Tereza Kulic and Ante Dagelic. Each of them has a role to play in a business through which they allow passengers to purchase online tickets on tens of thousands of bus lines to get from point A to point B across more than 50 countries. They're the strongest here on the Croatian market and in the Balkans, and are present in many European countries and even elsewhere in the world.

''Our focus is always on our passengers, our goal is to make their trip as easy as possible,'' says Ante Dagelic while Tereza Kulic remembers the very beginnings when bus companies had to be offered a new digital service, and at that time most worked manually and only a few had their own internet sales channels. Today, the story is completely different.

''The ratings left by passengers are also important to us and to the carriers, and only those who really rode can give a review,'' Vivian Luksic points out.

After Bookaway first took over the Split company GetByBus, and then 12Go, a local transport company from Southeast Asia, the group wants to achieve an ambitious goal - together they want to become the Booking.com of the travel industry.

''Currently, 95 percent of the land transport industry is offline, meaning travellers are wasting valuable time and money trying to manage their travel by booking flights and hotels online. The Bookaway Group wants to make traveling by train, ferry or bus an effortless experience. The finding, comparing and booking of the tickets is all done online, and customers receive support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,'' said Noam Toister, the founder and director of Bookaway on the occasion of the acquisition of GetByBus.

Toister founded Bookaway back in 2017 as a startup with two friends and business partners, they are David Yitzhaki and Omer Chehmer. In the meantime, they grew with the support of investors, and now with acquisitions. The Split company GetByBus will now work through Bookaway to accomplish this group’s mission, which means they want to modernise this 157 billion US dollar industry by uniting the world’s leading carriers and local suppliers with technology and resources that ultimately improve the entire travel industry.

''Changing this market wasn't at all easy. We've been building trust with suppliers for years, proving the benefits of doing digital business. The result of all that is the organic growth of the platform. Thanks to the partnership within the Bookaway Group, we're looking forward to sharing our resources and skills to further expand our customer base and gain more opportunities in regions such as Asia, the US and South America,'' said Morten Smalby.

He is especially happy now there is an additional opportunity to create new jobs in Split. They currently have 25 employees and want to hire a dozen more people in a variety of jobs, from web developers to marketing and sales. GetByBus has helped the digital transformation of bus carriers with its business, and is still working on it, now within the Bookaway Group.

Digital transformation is one of the European Union's top priorities, as stated on the European Parliament's portal, digital platforms affect various sectors from transport to energy, agri-food, telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing and healthcare and change people's lives. Technologies can help optimise production, reduce emissions and waste, strengthen companies' competitive advantages, and provide new services and products to consumers.

In addition to digitisation in action, the GetByBus example highlights the importance of the green transition, another of the EU's top priorities.

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