January the 14th, 2021 - The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has seen many Croatian companies struggle to keep their heads above water, with small Croatian companies suffering previously unimaginable losses and the threat of total closure. A tender designed solely for small Croatian companies is now in the works.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, the Ministry of Economy is preparing an intervention aid worth 10 million kuna for small Croatian companies and craft (obrt) owners in earthquake-stricken areas for the reconstruction of machines and workshops, for which a tender will be announced in two weeks.

An important part of the wider financial package of 1.5 billion kuna, intended for capacity increase, development and digitalisation, will soon be available to all business owners there. This was announced yesterday by the Minister of Economy Tomislav Coric, who, two weeks after the earthquake hit Sisak, Petrinja and Glina, organised a conversation with representatives of the largest companies in the affected area, including ​​Petrokemija, Sherif Group HiPP, the manufacturer of plastic bags Optiplast, the manufacturer of components for microchips, Applied Ceramics, the food chain City Kebab and the Italian ABS, which took over the plants of the former Sisak ironworks.

The meeting was also attended by the Minister of Labour, Josip Aladrovic, and Sisak-Moslavina County Prefect Ivo Zinic, as well as representatives of Hamag-Bicro, HBOR, HGK, HOK and HUP. The most attention, as stated, is being paid to small Croatian companies, and Coric announced that those business owners whose facilities were destroyed in the natural disaster at the end of 2020 will be given the opportunity to continue doing business in the temporary container settlement that is being built near Petrinja.

In addition to the already taken measures of the moratorium on business loans, Coric added that in the coming months, long-term measures will be taken to revitalise the affected area, and the possibility of introducing special tax treatment is also being actively considered.

January the 13th, 2021 - Croatian companies are becoming more and more recognised and respected across the world, and the Croatian company Microblink, headquartered in Zagreb, is just one of them.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the end of a series of successes of Croatian technology companies in 2020 was made by the roatian company Microblink with the investment of the Boston investment company Silversmith Capital Partners, which invested 60 million US dollars in Microblink for a minority stake, making the domestic company's market valuation exceed one billion kuna.

Microblink is a world leader in the field of computer vision based on artificial intelligence (AI), and many applications use its technology to use a mobile phone camera to replace manual data entry.

Their software products are used by several hundred million users in about 70 countries. In 2020, despite the coronavirus crisis, the Croatian company Microblink ended with a 36% increase in sales revenue with an increase in the number of employees, which now numbers more than 100, and with a new investment board with Sri Rao, a Silversmith partner, and Darren Bassman, co-founder of BlinkReceipt, who became the CEO of Microblink.

''The Microblink technology platform enables intelligent use of computer vision such as account scanning (BlinkReceipt), personal documents (BlinkID) and payment data (BlinkCard). BlinkReceipt extracts and identifies data at the level of the SKU (Central Control Unit) from the real-time accounts of hundreds of traders and millions of SKUs. There's a huge opportunity in this category and we're going to continue to invest in it,'' said Darren Bassman.

As this is the first time that external capital has entered Microblink, and for Silversmith it was the first time they invested in a Croatian company, the general partner in Silversmith, now a member of the Board of Microblink, Sri Rao, revealed to what the plans going forward are.

Why Microblink?

Microblink has brought together one of the world’s leading technology teams focused on data science and computer vision. This talented group has developed a platform that unlocks real-world AI and machine learning applications that are now used by hundreds of millions of end users, who collectively scan billions of documents each year to save time and money. The company is addressing a large, growing market and we look forward to working with a team that continues to develop customer-focused products that solve problems for companies in a variety of industries.

What benefits does partnering with Silversmith Capital Partners bring to Microblink?

Silversmith is focused on partnering with profitable companies like Microblink with high growth, run by their founders. Focusing on products focused on product growth as a market entry strategy allows us to leverage our experience and our networks as a complement to the management teams we support. Microblink has built a world-class engineering organisation and technology platform, and the partnership with Silversmith will help the company accelerate growth in key business areas, including product development, market entry and team expansion. We're long-term oriented investors and will work with the company to invest in a team, product and market-going organisation to enable sustainable growth in the future.

After the partnership with the Croatian company Microblink, will you start a deeper study of the Croatian IT scene, considering that Microblink is the first Croatian IT company in which you have invested?

We're always looking for exciting growing companies with market leading products in our key areas of focus. We're also discovering that there are more and more of them outside of the Silicon Valley, and this is a trend we have long believed in. We enjoy discovering great talents on the Croatian technology scene.

You state that Silversmith’s mission is to partner and support the best entrepreneurs in growing, profitable technology and healthcare companies. We've seen that technology, ie digitalisation and digital transformation, and healthcare are the most important industries, which in 2020 experienced additional growth due to the global crisis. How has this crisis affected Silversmith, this investment and results?

2020 was certainly a unique and challenging year on so many levels. In response to the crisis, there has been an acceleration of digital transformation around the world. What would take years to move, happened in a mere few months. We've seen this through the prism of our portfolio companies. Some of them were already remote organisations, and others had to move out of the office, while taking care of the health and safety of their teams. The profitable nature of these companies has allowed them to weather the storm, and the need for digital solutions due to the pandemic has allowed some companies to accelerate their growth.

Technology and health will continue to serve as key components of economic recovery even after the end of the pandemic. Our focus on growing, profitable companies means that every business is well positioned to address new opportunities. Across the portfolio in 2020, we saw 43 completed acquisitions, a 20 percent increase in employees, a 30 percent increase in average income, and four investment exits (full and partial).

How many professional investors do you gather together? How much has Silversmith collected since its founding back in 2015?

We have 22 professional investors. Since its inception, we have raised 460 million US dollars in the first fund in 2015, 670 million dollars in the second in 2018, and 880 million dollars in 2020. In the last five years, we've invested in 27 companies in the technology and health segment, with an emphasis primarily placed on supporting long-term growth.

What are the goals and plans for 2021?

Our goals for 2021 will be similar to those at the time the company was founded - finding and partnering with the best entrepreneurs in the technology and healthcare sector and working with them to expand and develop their business.

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January the 8th, 2021 - The Croatian company Koncar is very well known here and indeed across the wider region for its high quality products and the general level of respect attached to its name. Koncar is now earning respect across the world for the products it boasts under its belt.

As Novac writes, today, the name Koncar is recognisable all over the world and has rightfully become synonymous with a high level of quality and reliability. Koncar's equipment and plants located more than 100 countries on all continents are proof of these properties and are permanent monuments of the Koncar Group's praiseworthy achievements. The estimated share of exports in total revenues throughout 2020 for Koncar stands at about 65 percent, of which two thirds relate to other European Union countries.

This is the best indicator of the competitiveness of the Koncar Group's wide range of products and solutions in the field of energy and transport. By country in 2020, Koncar achieved the most significant exports on the markets of Sweden, followed by Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Finland and the United Arab Emirates, and generators and energy, distribution, special and measuring transformers were mostly delivered to those countries.

In 2020, Koncar also signed a new two-year contract for the supply of transformers of 100 to 630 kVA, voltage 10.5 and 21 kV for a German energy company. Although the cooperation with that company was significant before, in order to sign yet another new contract, the company needed to improve its technical design in accordance with the appropriate EU regulation. The contract was preceded by a demanding pre-qualification procedure, and state-of-the-art technical and technological solutions were used to meet the requirements of all corresponding and stringent EU regulations.

In additon to Europe, Koncar completed some complex projects on other continents in 2020, too. In 2020, This well known company made yet another bold new step forward in its product range and delivered nine transformers to an American customer for 525 kV and 250 kVA substations. These are also the largest transformers that the company has produced so far and are among the largest in the world of this type, in terms of voltage level and power.

The buyer of those transformers is one of the strategically most important power companies on American soil, given that it supplies electricity to customers such as the Pentagon, which further emphasises the importance of Koncar's realised projects. In Africa, the third unit at the Kambouro hydroelectric power plant in Kenya was put into operation as part of the second phase of its revitalisation. This is the second phase of the revitalisation of HPP Kamburu, and Koncar completed the first back in 2014 by replacing the excitation, protection and control system of motor drives.

A low-floor electric tram was also added to the list of Koncar's export products in 2020. After the reliability and quality were confirmed in daily operations in the City of Zagreb, which operates 142 trams, in November 2020, Koncar delivered the first of twelve trams intended for public transport in the city of Liepaja in Latvia. This cooperation began back in November 2018, when a contract was signed for the delivery of six low-floor trams, with the possibility of delivering additional vehicles when the funds for such a move were secured.

At the end of August 2020, Liepajas Tramvajs provided the funds needed for six more such trams, and again entrusted the production and delivery work to Koncar. Koncar's solutions for important subsystems, such as the main electric motor drive, auxiliary power supply, microprocessor control and communications, boxes and turntables, are all installed in those trams.

In 2020, Koncar contracted even more work here at home on the domestic market, and one of the most important projects it was engaged in was the completion of the Vis solar power plant which was put into operation by HEP back in September. In addition to "green" products in the field of energy, Koncar continues to successfully do well in the field of transport in Croatia. In response to the growing demand for passenger transport by rail, which is the most economic and environmentally friendly form of transport, Koncar has developed and manufactured electric and diesel electric trains. There are currently 27 of them in HZ Passenger transport/Putnicki prijevoz's fleet, and according to the obligations from the contract concluded back in 2014 and the addendum to the contract concluded in April 2020, Koncar will deliver another twelve such electric trains.

In addition, a new contract was signed with the same buyer in November this year - for the purchase and sale of 21 electric trains, eleven for suburban and ten for regional traffic. The Koncar Group also sees great potential in renewable energy sources and additional reduction of harmful impact on the environment, but also a step forward in the digitalisation of existing products and services, and in the coming years it plans to intensify activities in these areas through all of its business processes. A step in that direction was seen with the recent signing of a contract with the Croatian Transmission System Operator (HOPS).

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January the 6th, 2021 - Last year put the nail in the coffin for many a would-be entrepreneurial venture, but not everything is quite so bleak. The continental Croatian town of Koprivnica, for example, is making quite the name for itself when it comes to stimulating the growth of Croatian enterprises of various types.

As Novac writes, the economic crisis caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has hit the tourism-reliant Croatian economy extremely hard, there is practically no sector that hasn't been affected, but even in these extraordinary circumstances there are those who have found the knowledge, energy and new ideas needed to overcome this unprecedented and deeply difficult period.

Indeed, some of them have recognised the crisis as a period in which it is possible to lay the foundations for a new cycle of economic growth. Koprivnica is traditionally recognised as a strong economic, but above all industrial centre. Nevertheless, Koprivnica's local government is implementing a number of projects that stimulate entrepreneurship and make it easier for small Croatian enterprises to start up or expand their existing activities. In terms of the number of employees, Koprivnica is the 15th of all cities and municipalities in Croatia, and over 70 percent of the population is economically active. As a positive example, in this crisis-dominated year, the number of active craft owners increased by 8 percent when compared to last year, and there is even a slight increase in Croatian enterprises.

In Koprivnica today, there are the Dravska business zones covering 38 hectares with 23 business entities, as well as Radnicka with its 41 hectares and 20 business entities. These plots are fully equipped with communal infrastructure and are connected by road with the Podravina highway.

Furthermore, a year ago, in addition to the existing one, a new incubator for creative industries came to life, conceived as a space for the development of innovative and creative ideas, in October it celebrated one year of work. The fact that all rental spaces are now full speaks volumes about the success of the work going on there. Every day, the most modern technology is available to Croatian enterprises and entrepreneurs: holographic and VR equipment, a 3D printer, a gaming station and a teleconference hall.

In order to connect, share knowledge and collaborate, online DevCafe events are organised monthly, which allows all interested parties to get involved regardless of where they're located at that time. They are intended for anyone interested in topics from the fields of marketing, new technologies, design and IT. The project for the construction of the Creative Industries Incubator is worth 13.5 million kuna and is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

It, as well as the Entrepreneurship Incubator, is managed by the entrepreneurial support institution Enter Koprivnica, which also implements several national and international projects in addition to that. As part of the ECOS4IN project, work is underway to establish a Digital Information Hub that will serve as the main place for informing the entire ecosystem and small and medium Croatian enterprises operating in the county and beyond, since Enter Koprivnica cooperates very well with the Varazdin Technology Park and the Technology Innovation centre of Medjimurje within the Digital Innovation Hub.

The most recent plan is to establish a database of experts that will be available to all small and medium-sized Croatian enterprises interested in business expansion and digitalisation. This will make it easier for SMEs to access knowledge, technology and funding opportunities. Enter Koprivnica has also been approved the SCALing up in the creative industries for SMEs and self-employed project, which aims to develop special tools for training employees in creative and cultural industries that will support them to improve their competencies and skills needed to strengthen their competitive advantage within this demanding sector.

The European Regional Development Fund also co-finances the project Services for SMEs through PPI Enter Koprivnica, which organises events for entrepreneurs from the county with the aim of facilitating access to business knowledge. All of the above, combined with a series of measures that Koprivnica has itself designed to encourage entrepreneurship, are an invitation to all small and medium-sized Croatian enterprises to develop their business in that town.

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December the 31st, 2020 - the Croatian tourist company which is known for its numerous business ventures at home and abroad, the Arena Hospitality Group, has purchased yet another hotel in a foreign country, this time in the Serbian capital.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the large Croatian company, the Arena Hospitality Group announced recently that through its local branch located over in Serbia, it concluded the takeover of the 88 Rooms hotel in the wider centre of the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The value of the transaction stands at an enormous 45 million kuna in total.

The modern hotel is located a mere few minutes away from Belgrade's historic city centre, as its name suggests, it offers 88 rooms and suites, a restaurant, bar and conference room, as well as a well-equipped gym.

The acquisition of 88 Rooms is another milestone in the Arena Hospitality Group's strategy to expand its operations across the Central and Eastern European region. This acquisition also further enables the Arena Hospitality Group to increase the volume of the business it engages in in cities across Europe with the aim of increasing its presence in the higher category market segment in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, while striving to create added value for shareholders, Seebiz reports.

The Arena Hospitality Group's projects, in both the short and medium term, include repositioning the Brioni Hotel in the beautiful Istrian city of Pula into a luxury hotel boasting 227 rooms, with the ambition for it to become the best hotel in that category in all of Pula and its surroundings, the repositioning of Camp Stoja in Pula into a higher category camp, the conversion of a building location in the heart of Zagreb into a hotel with 113 rooms, which will include a famous restaurant and bar, wellness and spa facilities, a fitness centre, a meeting space and more, and the renovation of the Riviera Hotel in the very heart of Pula.

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December the 31st, 2020 - 126 Rijeka enterprises will receive a generous amount in non-refundable funds for development and entrepreneurship in the area of that Northern Adriatic city.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, 126 Rijeka enterprises are set to receive a very welcome two million kuna in non-refundable subsidies for the development of entrepreneurship in the area of ​​the City of Rijeka, it was said at a press conference held at the Rijeka city administration on Monday.

The public invitation for the implementation of measures from the General Programme of Measures received as many as 508 applications, which is 22.8 percent more than was received back in 2019, while 452 applications were assessed as acceptable.

147 requests were accepted, submitted by 126 Rijeka enterprises (economic entities), Rijeka's Deputy Mayor Marko Filipovic and Head of Entrepreneurship Jana Sertic both reported.

The objectives of the General Programme of Measures to Encourage the Development of Entrepreneurship in the City of Rijeka are to strengthen the competitive presence of Rijeka enterprises out on the wider market, achieve practical education and better information when it comes to entrepreneurship, improve the availability of financial resources and use entrepreneurial space and information infrastructure for entrepreneurship.

The programme includes 23 measures, and nine measures have been implemented with this public invitation. The beneficiaries are small business entities, which are entirely privately owned and whose headquarters are in the area of ​​Rijeka, as well as associations whose purpose is to promote the economic interests of cluster members.

Due to the circumstances caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the costs of purchasing equipment and personal protective equipment for protection against the spread of coronavirus were recognised earlier on this year.

The City of Rijeka started announcing a public invitation for the awarding of non-refundable subsidies to Rijeka enterprises thirteen years ago, and since then, a total of 20.4 million kuna has been awarded.

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December the 30th, 2020 - Podravka is as well known to every Croat as the dangers of propuh and arguments over what real burek are. Thanks to EU cash, the much loved Croatian company Podravka has its sights on one area in particular.

As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, for the project of developing innovative by-products during vegetable processing, worth a little less than seven million kuna, the Croatian compan Podravka was approved three million euros in non-refundable funds from the European Regional Development Fund. This is the first research project of the Koprivnica-based food company that will be financed from European Union funds.

As the Croatian company Podravka explains, during the two years of its implementation, an innovative, technologically efficient process of separating nutritionally valuable biowaste from the industrial vegetable processing of Podravka's Kalnik Factory in Varazdin will be looked into for the development of new and innovative food products.

The potential for biogas production from all waste production streams will also be further investigated, and the expected results of this project are the creation of new knowledge and the increase of Podravka's intangible assets through patents and yet more new brands, increasing the efficiency of the production process through the commercialisation of innovative products.

A few years ago, Podravka started analysing the condition and potential of by-products that arise during production in its factories, especially in the Kalnik and Umag plants.

As explained from the company, the research and development sector of Podravka in that period in cooperation with the academic community set hypotheses based on previously published scientific papers, and preliminary tests determined the existence of the nutritional potential of vegetable by-products that could focus on the development of completely new products and added value.

Since additional larger-scale research was needed for stronger evidence to back that up, back in February 2020, the Croatian company Podravka applied for EU funds through this project.

"I believe that the comprehensiveness of the project's goals, which touch on as many as three thematic priority areas of the Smart Specialisation Strategy of the Republic of Croatia (Food and Bioeconomy, Energy and Sustainable Environment and Health and Quality of Life), has greatly contributed to this rapid positive result.

We're extremely proud of this project, which is the result of cooperation between different sectors within the company, management, associates and consultants,'' said Jasmina Ranilovic, the project manager and the director of Research and Development at Podravka.

The recently presented project for the development of innovative products from the category of food for special medical needs is being co-financed from EU funds, which together included the Rudjer Boskovic Institute (RBI) and the pharmaceutical company Belupo. The value of the joint research and development project stands at an impressive nine million kuna, of which 6.1 million kuna was co-financed with European Union money.

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December the 28th, 2020 - One Varazdin County-based company boasts one of the youngest Croatian company directors, and has even managed to be awarded significant amounts of European Union (EU) cash for its production of popular plant products.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, one of the youngest directors in Croatia, 28-year-old Marko Cerjan, the director of CER-CO from Biljevac in Varazdin County, which produces and processes industrial hemp, presented a project to expand business and build new plants this week, worth a total of 5.3 million kuna

The aforementioned is an EU project which involves the production and commercialisation of innovative products from this Varazdin County company, from CBD oils to cosmetics and various teas, with the introduction of new plant cultures within the range. The investment will increase the already significant export potential of this impressive company and enable new employment, as well as the strengthening of added value when it comes to doing business.

"With the realisation of the project that should be completed in the spring, we want to position ourselves as a white-label company that will provide services to other related companies," said Marko Cerjan, who received an EU funds based grant in the amount of almost two million kuna.

In order to obtain such a grant, this Varazdin County company needed to explain in great detail the benefits of investing in ones health and overall quality of life.

The general goal of the project was to enable investments in the implementation of new solutions, innovative products from SMEs in S3 areas through investments in process innovation and business organisation. The purpose and specific goal of the project was to support the investments of CER-CO in the production and commercialisation of innovative products which are new to the market and will be able to be applied and classified in the S3 thematic priority area called "Health and quality of life".

Currently, this Varazdin County company processes only seeds, stems and flowers, while the implementation of the previously mentioned EU project will see it carry out an additional production process that includes the phase of oil pressing, the production of protein, industrial hemp flour, CBD oil and even cosmetics.

The implementation of the CER-CO project will increase the level of technological readiness and productivity by investing in increasing production capacity in order to effectively meet the needs of existing and potential customers.

As part of that investment, the plan is to purchase equipment for drying raw materials, harvested industrial hemp, separation lines with display, separation and calibration lines, equipment for the automatic filling of bottles, labels, forklifts, packaging machines, and industrial vacuum cleaners.

In addition, a system of Good Agricultural and Collecting Practice (GACP) will be established, and the project envisages the opening of three new work positions. The plan is also to educate the company's employees to work with new equipment as well as an innovative production process.

"In the new 560 square metre building, there will be a production facility of 250 metres square which will house machines for processing medicinal herbs and oil pressing, and the remaining area will include office space with a conference hall, an inhouse laboratory and a sales area with a range of cosmetics other hemp products available.

Next year, the plan is to invest in both plants and machines for the drying of medicinal plants, with specially regulated temperature and microclimatic conditions, as this is very important in drying plants like hemp as it maintains medicinal properties which include cannabinoids and terpenoids.

CER-CO will be the first entity in all of Varazdin County to provide the otherwise extremely demanding service of drying out medicinal plants, as Marko Cerjan explained, whose company generates as much as 90 percent of its revenues from exports.

The products are exported to a number of EU countries, Poland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, the Netherlands and other countries, and with this investment they hope for even stronger placement on various foreign markets. Additional employment is also planned, as they hope the pandemic will soon subside with the introduction of the vaccine, so that they can continue production, which has failed this year due to poor market conditions.

They cooperate with numerous subcontractors, in Varazdin County alone they grow 30 hectares of industrial hemp, there's also a little in Zadar County, and most of their production takes place in Slavonia, where there are larger areas in which to do it, which makes overall production simpler.

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December the 9th, 2020 - With the coronavirus pandemic posing a constant threat to the normal functioning of the enfeebled Croatian healthcare system, the likes of Andrija and now Megi have been a blessing. Artificial intelligence is certainly the way to go in many a sector, and the the pandemic continuing to reign strong, the help of the Croatian Mindsmiths' creation, Megi, is proving invaluable.

As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian Mindsmiths developed Megi the virtual healthcare assistant in collaboration with the Magdalena Clinic using AI, and they presented it at an online conference on Tuesday. Her digital brain was modelled on the knowledge of experts, primarily cardiologists, as well as cardiology nurses.

Last Sunday, blood pressure was measured five times a day three hours apart to get a detailed picture of the condition monitored by Megi, a virtual healthcare assistant from the Croatian Mindsmiths, an Al startup, who helps people with hypertension, a chronic disease which causes high blood pressure.

As many as 40 percent of people over the age of 25 suffer from hypertension, of which they're unaware, it affects 31 percent of the adult population, but only 1 in 25 people actually has the disease under control. Long-term exposure to high blood pressure can cause strokes and heart attacks, kidney and heart failure, not to mention severe chronic disease.

During the testing process, the Croatian Mindsmiths' innovative creation stated the measurement and explained everything in detail, step by step, and those undergoing Megi's tests almost forgot that she isn't actually a real person but a product of artificial intelligence (AI).

She also checked family histories with other necessary risk factors for high blood pressure, and after collecting all of the data, she made an assessment of the situation with Dr. Aleksandar Trbovic, a cardiologist and head of the Magdalena Polyclinic in Zagreb, with whom she scheduled a meeting for the second day to see if there was any cause for concern.

''Megi helps us doctors to precisely dose therapies, speeds up processes, and the added value for our community is that it reduces the costs of treating hypertension and its possible complications," explained Dr. Trbovic.

Megi's initial development took six months before direct contact with patients and physicians could begin, and since then, she has been integrated into the actual hospital system and has been caring for more than 80 hypertensive patients for twelve months.

''With Megi, the time to gather information is shortened from fifteen minutes down to a mere four, while the time of therapy can be shortened from six months to three weeks. The digital assistant has a plan for you, monitors and reminds you to measure your blood pressure, calms you down and encourages you when you're worried.

If Megi notices that things aren't going well, she will alert and call a doctor. We have set a goal - if we can use AI to copy the brain of one expert and help one person, then we can help millions of others. In reality, people wait in hospitals for months to get a diagnosis, and Megi can relieve almost 80 percent of such check-ups,'' said Mislav Malenica, the director and founder of the Croatian Mindsmiths, who recognised healthcare as the first sector in which AI should be applied.

The director of digital health at the Magdalena Clinic, Nina Sesto, warned of predictions that by 2050, 40 percent of people in Europe will be over the age of sixty, which means they will more than likely have one or more chronic diseases to cope with.

“Artificial intelligence is the key to healthcare scalability. At the same time, it can take care of thousands of patients,'' pointed out Sesto.

Mirjana Lackovic suffers from hypertension and has been using Megi's help for twelve months now. "If my blood pressure doesn't adjust, I contact Megi until the condition normalises. If it's bad for a couple of days, she contacts the doctors,'' said Lackovic, while Stipe Knezovic points out that Megi is kind, acts in a calming manner just like a real nurse, and the feeling, he says, is just like having a pleasant conversation with a real person.

Megi has recently become part of the process of treating patients with hypertension at the Health Centre in Zagreb, in eight chronic patients cared for by Dr. Renata Romic, who especially praises the positive psychological effect in moments when blood pressure starts to jump up, because through conversation, the Croatian Mindsmiths' incredible creation suppresses additional stress and further blood pressure issues.

Clinical testing of the Megi prototype has shown huge potential for the application of AI in the healthcare sector and a drastic increase in efficiency in the treatment of chronic patients, so they expect, as was concluded Jan Stedul from the Croatian Mindsmiths, that Megi will gradually spread to all healthcare institutions.

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December the 7th, 2020 - One Zagreb-based company, Aduro Idea, came up with a very interesting solution to a pressing pandemic-dominated issue back during the summer months, and it could put Croatia on the map in a very interesting way indeed.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, during the turbulent year of the coronavirus pandemic when distance is more the rule than the recommendation, one Croatian company called Aduro Idea introduced an IT system back in mid-August that will allow for the counting of people both indoors and outdoors by measuring signal oscillations in a WiFi electromagnetic field, according to Sinisa Nikolic.

The primary purpose is conceived for the security area, from mass security alarm systems that say whether or not there are people in a particular room or in a territory, to specialised applications in the form of state border protection in preventing illegal crossings.

''When measuring signal oscillation, we use only a simple WiFi transceiver that operates on a 2.4 GHz frequency that is public, and thus available to everyone. We use different techniques for signal analysis, from statistical analysis to machine learning,'' Nikolic explains.

But the application can be varied; it can aid in the creation of smart buildings that optimise their energy consumption based on the number of people inside, retailers can better plan their business operations based on information about which parts of the stores are the most frequented; and smart cities can better plan their resources based on estimates of which parts of the city are more visited or populated.

''Counting individuals in a crowd is a key piece of technology for crowd control and public safety. Information such as the number, density or distribution of participants provides effective safety guidelines for public places such as stations, shopping malls and open squares, especially in these emerging circumstances,'' he said.

Aduro Idea's plans are currently in their development phase in which they will try to prove the possibility of counting people indoors and outdoors in such a manner. Then, they'll start making a concrete product that will be able, says Nikolic, to "look through the walls", and thanks to their product, Croatia would be the first in the world to be able to count people by watching WiFi signals and their oscillations.

"In the first phase, we need different methods to come up with a precise system for measuring the number of people in a place, and in the second phase, we'll use the obtained research results as the final product in the form of software and hardware components.

Since the project started, the data we receive in weekly measurements shows some promising results, which is very motivating for the entire development team ", explains Nikolic, adding that the first part of measurement and modelling is planned to be completed by the end of January 2021. Aduro Idea is also being assisted in this venture by two scientists from the Department of Physics at the Faculty of Science.

Upon completion of the project, the plan is to invest approximately eight million kuna in it, in which the Call for development of new products and services arising from research and development activities - phase II of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development was important.

Aduro Idea was otherwise founded back in 2007 by Nenad Raca, and the initial focus was on software development for telecom operators. The field of activity has expanded to the media industry, catering, logistics and distribution.

Aduro Idea's primary area of ​​expertise is the development of integration interfaces, extensive data processing and analysis, process automation, sales systems for telecommunications and the custom development of business software solutions, and their development is based on cloud technologies (Amazon and Google).

Last year, the European technology magazine CIO Applications Europe ranked this innovative Zagreb company among the ''Top 10 Telecom Solution Providers in Europe in 2019'' that lead the next generation of technology leaders, having the greatest impact on the development of the telecommunications industry.

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