As Marta Duic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 12th of December, 2019, the talented and innovative Croatian entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš, the founder and CEO of the remarkable company Include, one of the leading Croatian manufacturers of smart solutions, has won a prestigious award for his impressive efforts.

On Wednesday at the Croatian Music Institute, the Croatian entrepreneur attended the awards ceremony and took home an award. This award ceremony in the one in which National Geographic Croatia presented its awards to individuals, teams, companies and institutions that contribute the most to sustainability in the Republic of Croatia.

To be more specific, National Geographic Croatia presented a long-term project called "Žuti okvir" back at the beginning of this year, with the motto "We inspire people to care for their planet" attached to it. The United Nations (UN) has identified as many as seventeen sustainable development goals that will ensure the survival of both planet Earth and human civilisation, and if you operate within those seventeen categories, you could win an award.

Croatian entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš therefore received an award in the category of ''affordable and clean energy", and his tireless determination to keep pushing his company, Include, further and further are likely to see many more awards from where that one came from.

"Four years ago, when we started our smart bench project and the company, we didn't expect that more than two million people would be using our products annually across 51 markets worldwide.

More than 1,300 of our products have produced over 40,000 kWh of energy from renewable sources so far, reducing CO2 production. This may not be a big figure today, but I believe that over the years, more and more of our products, which will also be based on renewable energy sources, will contribute to reducing CO2 globally and thus provide a better future for generations to come,'' Mrvoš said.

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The attribute of a fast-growing company implies an average annual growth of employees of more than 10 percent over a three year period, and Croatian companies are higher than the European Union average in that sense.

As Jadranka Dozan/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 11th of December, 2019, in the business sector in Croatia, the share of fast-growing companies is higher than the EU average, and in the competition of 10 so-called New Europe countries, Croatia is right in the middle.

As stated, the attribute of a fast-growing company implies an average annual growth in the number of employees over 10 percent per annum over a three-year period, with active companies with at least 10 employees at the beginning of the period under review. According to the most recent comparative Eurostat survey in Croatia, approximately every eighth Croatian companie, representing 12.5 percent of the total number of active companies with more than 10 employees, is close to being called a ''fast-growing'' company. These Croatian companies employ more than 114,000 people.

At the EU level, the share of fast-growing companies is slightly lower, standing at 11.3 percent. There are around 190,000 of these in total, and their importance and contribution to growth and job creation are evidenced by the fact that such companies provide jobs for 16.4 million European Union employees. Over recent years, the share of fast-growing companies in the bloc has been increasing, increasing in three years (compared to 2014) by 2.1 percentage points at EU level.

The same trend is observed here at home with Croatian companies. However, sector-wise, Eurostat data suggests that the fast-growing companies are somewhat different in Croatia than they are in the EU. The Eurostat analysis points out that the share of high-growth enterprises is more pronounced in the service sectors than in the rest of the business sector, with the highest percentage being in the Information and Communication sector (17 percent), Administrative and support services (15.3 percent) and the Transport and storage sector (14 percent).

The data for Croatia shows that the largest share of fast growing companies has been recorded in Transport and Storage (16 percent, and 120 companies with more than 6,700 employees) and in the Information and Communication sector (15 percent and 90 companies with more than five thousand employees in total).

The share of fast-growing companies among the total active section with at least 10 employees in the EU is led by Ireland (16.5 percent), Spain (15 percent), Portugal (14.2 percent) and the Netherlands (13.9 percent), while in Cyprus and Romania, this figure stands at less than three percent, and it is interesting to note that Austria is also below the average with 7.8 percent so called fast-growing companies.

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The second largest system integrator in the country, King ICT, boasts 500 employees and as much as 90 percent of its revenue is generated right here on the Croatian market.

As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 11th of December, 2019, Croatia's King ICT plans to round off the year 2019 with an incredible one billion kuna in revenue and more than 500 employees under its belt. This will make it the fourth IT company in all of Croatia with revenue above the more than impressive aforementioned amount.

According to the latest data, for 2018, Croatian IT billionaire companies are led, globally, by Infobip with 3.24 billion kuna in revenue. This is followed by the M SAN Group with 1.94 billion kuna and Ericsson Nikola Tesla with 1.42 billion kuna.

"We're entering 2020 with 500 employees, and we're proud to say that 2019 was the most successful year in King ICT's history, with estimated consolidated revenues of more than one billion kuna," stated Plamenko Barišić, CEO of King ICT.

Back in 2016, the company experienced accelerated growth. At the time, it had revenues of 554.7 million kuna and was the second largest system integrator in the country, behind Combis within Croatian Telecom (Hrvatski Telekom). Combis retained the lead a year later, but then things changed.

King ICT reached 625.8m kuna back in 2017, surpassing Combis last year and exceeding an impressive 100m kuna for the very first time. In 2018, it had revenue of 816.9 million kuna. Barišić expects King ICT to continue growing strongly.

King ICT and Combis are the only major system integrators focused significantly on the Croatian market, whose private and public sectors are thirsty for high-quality IT support and development. King ICT generates 90 percent of its revenue in Croatia while many other domestic IT companies have focused solely on exports in recent years.

Some of King ICT's biggest projects this year in the Republic of Croatia include the introduction of SAP in HEP ​​Gas, HAC, Crodux and Nova TV, the introduction of asset management systems in HZ infrastructure, the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle for the Ministry of the Interior (MUP) in cooperation with Ericsson NT, with whom they're also working to further computerise the 112 system.

The Ministry of Agriculture is introducing a system for state land management and, with Fina, an e-Fee system. King ICT is expanding to the west as well.

"King ICT has signed two contracts with NATO's Communications and Information Agency this year and, after the introduction of IT network equipment in the Netherlands, we'll introduce a high-bandwidth network and communication infrastructure solutions at the NCIA site in The Hague," Barišić said, adding that opportunities for similar export deals in the banking sector are also foreseen.

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As Darko Bicak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of December, 2019, although the Čakovec-based company Medjimurjeplet has built its brand and business on the production of quality furniture for outdoor spaces based on wood and metal, in recent years, an increasing part of their business has been the production of parquet, windows and doors.

So far, these assortments have in principle been separated through various presentation and sales channels, but today they have been integrated through their concept stores in Zagreb and in Munich. Just last week, an exhibition and sales centre was opened in Zagreb, which houses almost the entire collection of their companies - Međimurjeplet, Pana and Pana Windows.

Although the companies have not been formally consolidated as a group, it is a business “empire” created by Alojzije Sobočanac, which is increasingly being taken over by his daughters Nikolina Babić and Ana Marija Sobočanec Dalić.

“Our entire range is based on the concept of ''living with nature'', ie, high quality and natural materials, various combinations of wood and aluminum, while we have no PVC in our offer. Investments in the modernisation of the window and door factory, Pana Windows in Čakovec, and the new Pana multilayer factory in Turopolje, will greatly increase our capacity and competitiveness on foreign markets,'' says Ana Marija Sobočanec Dalić.

She added that 90 percent of their parquet flooring is currently exported, as are 50 percent of their windows and doors, while in the case of furniture, that figure stands at around 20 percent. In the coming period, they plan to put even more emphasis on exports, especially in the area of ​​doors and windows, which is why they have set up a company in Germany. Medjimurjeplet's most important export markets are those of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and in the furniture segment, they also have significant cooperation with Italy, from which they import a part of their non-production range.

In the past year, they have invested 13 million kuna in the modernisation of Pana Windows, while a joint investment with Austria's Weitzer Parkett in the new Pana factory near Velika Gorica stands at more than 70 million kuna (10 million euros). Each partner secured half the amount, and the factory should start operating as of January the 1st, 2020. Although Medjimurjeplet was the base from which the expansion to take over Pana started some 20 years ago, today the furniture factory is actually the smallest member of this business family.

Namely, Medjimurjeplet has around 30 employees and 27 million kuna in revenue, while the Pana parquet factory already generates 70 million kuna with 160 workers, which will be further increased by a new factory and around 50 new employees. Pana Windows, on the other hand, has 55 employees and 20 million kuna in revenue, which will certainly be enhanced by modernising the factory and boosting exports. Here in Croatia, the company mostly cooperates with architectural offices and construction companies, although they also have more and more inquiries and orders from private individuals.

''We're most represented in the projects of high-end hotels, restaurants and residential and commercial buildings. One of our significant partners is VMD, which has used us for all its projects, and one of them is their Blok Bužanova on the ground floor in which we've set up our Concept store in Zagreb,'' pointed out Ana Marija Sobočanec Dalić.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 4th of December, the use of the cloud in doing business in Croatia has increased significantly this year. According to the first results of CBS research entitled "The application of information and communication technologies in enterprises in 2019" the cloud is now used by 37 percent of Croatian companies.

In 2018, that figure stood at 31 percent, as it did in the previous year. The Croatian economy is, according to Eurostat, one of the top ten in the European Union in terms of cloud usage. Compared to last year, the largest increase in the use of cloud technologies in business in Croatia was recorded in office software in the cloud, where it jumped by five percentage points to 59 percent. The same leap was observed in database hosting. Now, as many as 52 percent of Croatian companies have their databases on the cloud.

Furthermore, accounting is rapidly moving to the cloud. This year, 48 percent of Croatian companies use cloud accounting services. The year before, its use in this field was down by four percentage points. The use of email in the cloud, which jumped three percentage points, to 85 percent is similarly increasing. Cloud storage has grown two percentage points, up to 67 percent, and is still rather weak, even though tourism, which would be a logical driver of demand, is increasing the use of CRM in the cloud.

In the past year, cloud usage has increased by only one percentage point and now cloud is used by 18 percent of Croatian companies when it comes to CRM. Another interesting thing is the continued growth of internet sales. Croatian companies have been claiming more than half of their sales through the Internet for several years. This year, that percentage has jumped two percentage points to 56 percent. Furthermore, in 2019, the CBS also analysed for the first time the willingness of the Croatian economy to resist cybercrime.

The most used prevention measure is software updates, which is regularly done up by 97 percent of large Croatian companies, 93 percent of medium-sized and 82 percent of small Croatian companies. Compared to last year, the number of Croatian companies with Internet access between 10 and 100 Mbps climbed from 63 to 65 percent, and the number of companies with access greater than 100 Mbps increased from 9 to 12 percent.

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More than 1000 investors have invested in this Croatian company, raising its market value to a massive 45 million euros. As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 3rd of December, 2019, Greyp Bikes, whose founder and director is the incredible Croatian entrepreneur from Livno, Mate Rimac, has raised 1.44 million euros in capital, 79 percent more than the target, through the popular German platform Neufund.

This concludes, and very successfully so, the first regulated blockchain and cryptocurrency group investment campaign in a company located here in Europe. In the USA, such investment campaigns have been underway since May 2016, the crowdsourcing platforms and campaigns are overseen there by the SEC regulator and FINRA.

Here at home in Europe, however, the move by the Croatian electric car manufacturer and Greyp Bikes owner sets a real precedent on the financial markets here. Greyp Bikes has launched the first legal Equity Token Offering (ETO) in the whole of Europe.

Its compliance with the law was monitored by the Liechtenstein Financial Market Authority (FMA) regulator. ETO is a combination of the controversial and unregulated Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and the more traditional and preregulated Initial Public Offering (IPO). In recent years, many entrepreneurs have opted to raise capital through ICOs because of the low costs involved, which has created pressure on the offer of expensive investment mechanisms, such as IPOs, upon which the world stock exchanges from the NYSE and LSE to the ZSE are based.

Mario Vojvoda, ETO project manager at Greyp Bikes and co-founder and technical director of Croatian startup Tolar, says they have opened a new opportunity for EU companies and investors: "ETO investing will increase financing opportunities for all companies and democratise the availability of money, which is something crucial in markets like the Croatian one, which isn't so much in the focus of big investors,'' stated Vojboboda, noting that Greyp Bikes' ETO still didn't go all that smoothly despite the excellent results we now see in the end.

Potentially the biggest problem was created by the German regulator BaFina, which, as soon as it found out what was going on, issued a statement accusing the Croatian company of potentially issuing a public offering without a prospectus through the aforementioned German platform.

BaFina argued that there was no exemption from the obligation to publish a prospectus for all campaigns advertised in Germany under their Securities Act. It also demanded clarification from Greyp Bikes. Neither Neufund, Greyp Bikes or even crypto experts saw the issue as ETO approval was issued by the Liechtenstein FMA. This turned the debate into a weighing-in of the forces of the two EU regulators. The direction in which that all went is best described by the fact that BaFina did not seek a ban on Greyp Bikes' campaign, that is, it was more than successfully concluded.

Mario Vojvoda politely declined to comment on BaFina's move, but stressed that the most important thing for them from the beginning of campaign planning was that the process was regulatory-compliant and fully legal.

"We've made great efforts to have a serious, transparent, clear and legally clean process and we consider our process to be completely regular," stated Vojboda. He added that it is absolutely crucial for them to have a dialogue with regulators and to make sure all the details are clear. All of this fuss failed affect the ETO campaign. Greyp Bikes had planned to raise 805,617 euros, and in the end, a total of 1017 investors bought stakes in the Croatian company in the amount of 1.44 million euros.

As a result, Greyp Bikes now has a market value of 45 million euro or more than 330 million kuna. Here in Croatia, Funderbeam SEE offers a similar investment opportunity, but for example without cryptocurrency payments. However, as with stock exchanges, it seems crucial to choose a specific target group of investors. Namely, some of the biggest investors and biggest business partners in Mate Rimac's businesses so far come from Germany.

"The campaign has aroused a lot of investor interest and has thus enabled us to create a technology-loving community that is ready for bold steps in technology development, in which it will actively participate with Greyp, Bikes" explained Vojvoda.

Mate Rimac, founder and CEO of Greyp Bikes, sees the company with revenues of one billion kuna by 2024. Last year, according to Fina, the company reduced revenue from 3.6 kuna down to 3.2 million kuna, while the company's losses increased from 2.7 kuna to 7.7 million kuna. On the other hand, it sees growth in the use of blockchain in smart traffic. Neufund itself is already preparing three new ETO campaigns for two startups from Germany and one from India.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 28th of November, 2019, in less than an hour, the amazing Croatian startup STEMI raised over one million in capital (154,000 euros) to expand its operations in the USA and Germany.

The group investment campaign at Funderbeam SEE for the Rijeka-based educational and technological (edtech) startup STEMI, which celebrated with the first Croatian educational robot Hexapod, has now set a new investment record in Croatia with its incredible acheivement. So far, nobody on the entire platform, jointly run by the Estonian Funderbeam and the Zagreb Stock Exchange, has managed to reach their first million so quickly.

In addition, STEMI has set a modest monthly target of 2.25 million kuna (300,000 euros) and has exceeded half of the minimum capital required to successfully complete this funding round. Marin Trošelj, co-founder and director of STEMI, says that in case of higher demand, the campaign will increase. "We offer 6.25 to 10 percent shares in STEMI for a stake of 300-500 thousand euros," Trošelj stated.

In his presentation at the Zagreb Stock Exchange, he revealed several facts that could explain the significant investor interest STEMI can boast of. In addition to being a new key product with which to expand, licenses for STEM education as a service, which has already been successfully tested over in the United States, the startup's founder stated that its market in the US and EU is as high as 360,000 schools. It already has a partner in a new niche in the US and is just about to sign a contract with another partner closer to home in Germany.

Furthermore, in its presentation to investors in Rijeka, STEMI's rapid growth of income and profitability was also mentioned. In 2020, STEMI expects 1.6 million kuna in revenue, a year later it expects 13.5 million kuna, and in 2022, with expected revenue of 39.9 million kuna, it expects to make a profit for the very first time.

A year later, revenue should jump up to above 90 million kuna, to an incredible 203.6 million kuna in 2024.

"In high school education, we're better positioned than Lego, we offer more, and we have a successful pilot and demand," Trošelj stated.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Suzana Varosanec writes on the 28th of November, 2019, the Zagreb-based IT company Aduro Idea (Aduro Ideja) presented a brand new business solution for renters and private users in Zagreb.

The product is a smart lock called the NCF SmartLock. Digitising the process allows front doors to be opened via a smartphone (or with an unlock code), giving renters a tool that allows guests to open the door by sending what is known as a digital key. It is given for a fixed period of time, and after it expires, the door can no longer be opened.

Aduro Idea is led by director Nenad Raca, who also owns the company. According to him, the project for the commercialisation of the NCF SmartLock business solution is worth as much as 1.9 million kuna, which, with an amount of around 900 thousand kuna, was co-financed under the call for the "commercialisation of entrepreneurship innovation" with ESIF funds under the competitiveness and cohesion operational program 2014-2020.

"The project began back in April 2018, and today we have a Croatian product that can be attached to any cylinder. The NFC SmartLock is designed and constructed entirely from the minds of our engineers. In addition to the software part, where we're most ''at home'', we've also developed electronic and mechanical solutions, all in collaboration with the Croatian distributor of global lock brands,'' stated Raca.

For starters, the smart feature is only to do with unlocking and locking the door with the use of a mobile phone, but according to Aduro Idea's further announcements, various upgrades are coming soon - from the smart ring to the opening doors using face recognition. The competitive advantage of this business solution is reflected in the speed of its implementation, and Aduro Idea has explained that installation takes only two or three minutes for locksmiths. Interestingly, the Zagreb-based IT company intends to link locksmiths to interested customers with targeted distribution.

"We're entering onto the market in January and the final preparations are underway, linking up with agencies to offer renters this business improvement solution is coming next season. We plan to integrate with eVisitor, and when everything is technologically rounded off, the effect will be to create a different and more discrete experience for both parties, the renter won't have to meet with the guest if he doesn't want to,'' says Raca, adding that talks are being held with potential manufacturers in case there is a need for large volume production.

Zagreb's Aduro Idea, with close to 4 million kuna in revenue in 2018, is developing software solutions for foreign clients in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, USA and Denmark. They are expanding their business and currently employ just under twenty people. The net salary of the most experienced employees is 15,000 kuna or more, and everyone receives various bonuses.

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Marin Bek, electrical engineer and co-founder of Ascalia and Kraken Systems, reflects on his life and success for Generacija NOW, a Hrvatski telekom project, in the form of a recent letter to his younger self. After graduating from FER (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing), he moved to America and found a job there, but eventually returned to Čakovec, Croatia. Today, at age 33, he runs two very successful companies.

When he was a kid in elementary school, he was dismantling TVs and burning things. And it was obvious to everyone that he wouldn’t study history but something STEM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). He often went cycling with his mom, and while they rode together, she tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He entered eighth grade and he told her that he wanted to be a programmer and work in California. Then he completed his degree in electrical engineering and computer science and lived in California for a while. After a few years, he returned from America to Čakovec, Croatia and started an IT company and later a tech startup there. It might have seemed like an odd path to his peers, but he knew that he had made the right decision because it is not important where you work in IT, but the kind of work you do.

Computer Whiz

Everyone in elementary school was interested in technology, but when he chose a high school, he encountered prejudice for the first time. He didn’t want to enroll in high school and chose the technical middle school in Čakovec instead, and since that school was not at its best, his former professors slandered him. They also summoned his mom to school and recommended that she take him out of technical school and enroll him in high school. And then his cousin Siniša, who had graduated from FER and the technical school in Varaždin, advised Marin’s mother to allow Marin to study what he wanted. Fortunately, she understood and gave him that choice.

The technical middle school was too easy for him. He was 16 years old, and advanced to the second level. Everything went smoothly, even though he wasn’t learning anything, and that's how it remained until he enrolled in FER. However, he found math so difficult there that he nearly lost a year and almost dropped out of college; but he advanced (barely). It took him some time to get used to the fact that things were not as simple as they were in high school, and he would have to study harder.

Working Full-time in College

He started working full time at Bosch during his second semester of college so that he could stay in Zagreb. He skipped typical student life and extended his studies to six and a half years. After working at Bosch for a few years, he had had enough of small programming jobs and he quit. Then he started working for the Austrian company AVL, and stayed there until leaving for America.

In the summer before his third year of college, he took a bus from Zadar to Čakovec. Among the documentaries shown during the bus ride was one about underwater robots exploring the Titanic. Seeing this encouraged him to enroll in a seminar on electrical engineering and the design of autonomous robots. He enjoyed this seminar and his professors persuaded him to switch from computers to electronics.

Autonomous Underwater Diver

He remained at AVL and his seminar paper turned into a graduate thesis. Then he made his own autonomous underwater diver, which was like a small underwater drone. Shortly before graduation, FER gave a lecture on startups, which still seemed like an abstract term back then. After that lecture, he spoke to the lecturer and Vladimir de Franceschi, a startup lawyer who worked in Silicon Valley, and told them about his autonomous diver. The lawyer like what he heard and suggested that he apply for the Startup Accelerator Program at the US-based Founder Institute in Zagreb, and later helped him with his startup in San Francisco.

After graduation he continued working at AVL. He wanted to enroll in the Founder Institute's American Startup Accelerator Program but needed an investment of 3000 HRK, which he didn’t have. His grandmother had a stroke and he helped pay for her care. Then his mother became ill and he looked after her as well. After discussing options with friends, his cousin Siniša lent him the money which was a major turning point. In Zagreb, he became familiar with the startup culture through the accelerator program.

From Croatia to San Francisco

One afternoon in Čakovec in the winter of 2012, he cut off part of his thumb above the bone while splitting firewood for his mother. They saved his thumb and the three months of sick leave turned out to be a positive thing. During his time at home he realized that it was better to work alone than in an office, and started thinking about moving to San Francisco. He founded his first startup while still in Zagreb, and soon found a job online at the Nextuser startup so that he could pay rent, food and finance his own project. Many of his peers warned him of the risk of quitting a job at a well-off Austrian company to launch a startup with someone that he had met on the Internet, but he believed it would pay off in the end.

He enjoyed San Francisco, and like everyone else, he juggled several jobs while developing his startup. It was entirely commonplace there to be sitting in a cafe and have a waiter share an idea for a startup. He tried to get involved with marine technology and underwater drones but couldn’t obtain financing. Six and a half years later, he realizes that his idea was ahead of its time, and making it happen would have been extraordinarily expensive.

His project eventually failed, and he ran out of money, but quickly connected with people who would play a key role in his future. At Nextuser he had advanced from IT developer to CTO, and became involved with finding investors, which enhanced his knowledge and pool of acquaintances. However, he wanted to return to Croatia for his mom's sake and didn’t want to get stuck in America forever. In 2013, he and his friend and colleague Dean Strbad launched an IT company called Kraken Systems which dealt with big data in Čakovec. For a while he lived on the Čakovec-San Francisco route. After two and a half years, he left Silicon Valley and returned to Croatia.

Return to Croatia

When he set up Kraken Systems in Čakovec, his critics thought it strange that he had not chosen Zagreb. But his reasons were based on logic: Dean, who is also from Čakovec, worked alongside him. He also set up a home office so that he would not have to rent a space. Besides, he wanted to be closer to his mom because she was ill and needed his help. And, he didn’t allow himself to be influenced by peer pressure, because he had been shaped by American business culture, and knew that the location of his firm was completely irrelevant.

He didn’t plan on working with Croatian clients anyway, and it didn't matter to anyone in America whether the company is in Zagreb, Čakovec or Varaždin because they’d probably never heard of any of those cities. Also, in America, he never experienced prejudice regarding where he worked or where he came from. San Francisco is a melting pot, which is a positive aspect of life there. People arrive from all over the world and come from many different backgrounds.

However, after three and a half years, he decided to move the business to a more central location. His mother’s health didn't improve, and he moved to Zadar, where it became apparent that he would never return to Čakovec. As he continued to add staff; he decided to rent offices in Zagreb. However, he kept an office in Čakovec, where three people are currently working.

Kraken Systems is a now a company with close to 1 million EUR in revenue and they work with clients like Carrefour, Nestlé, Ferrer and Forbes. Four years after Kraken Systems began operations, he launched Ascalia, another tech startup, and now has over 20 employees in both companies.

He found investors from Canada and Croatia and his new startup focuses on industry and helping factories to modernize. They use the benefits of technology to reduce environmental impact and overall costs while optimizing operations. He created software and devices which allow industrial machines, made from 1979 to the present, to connect to the Internet. This allows clients to run a smart factory without a major investment. He has continued to develop this company, which is active in London, Paris and Germany. Everywhere except Croatia.

These days he travels all over the world: one day he’s in Paris, the next day in Munich or London. He also travels through America, Europe and China for work.

Advice to Young Entrepreneurs

His advice to young entrepreneurs? Don’t hesitate to take risks and follow your instincts without overthinking things. There will be tough times and obstacles, but be persistent and don't give up. Unfortunately, he no longer has any close relatives: mom, dad, or grandparents, so he doesn’t rule out living abroad again. Seven years ago, he was raising money for gas in Čakovec, and he never dreamed of achieving such success in his early thirties. He has no idea what his forties will bring. We’ll have to wait and see.

About Generacija NOW

Generacija NOW is a donor-sponsored program implemented by Hrvatski Telekom in partnership with the Institut za razvoj i inovativnost mladih (Institute for Youth Development and Innovation). In four years, more than HRK 4 million has been invested in preparing young people for jobs of the future, and the program works with more than 300 educational institutions across Croatia.

With the documentary “Generacija inspiracija” (Inspiration Generation), as well as a series of activities within the donation program, Hrvatski Telekom emphasizes the importance of investing in better education for all school age groups – so that they can successfully navigate life without missing out on opportunities provided by the latest technological advances. The importance of destroying preconceptions and prejudices must not be forgotten. And one of the more common preconceptions is that businesses cannot be started in smaller environments.

For more information on Croatian entrepreneurs and business in Croatia, follow our Business page here or our Made in Croatia page here.

As Glas Istre writes on the 25th of November, 2019, due to its impressive 100 percent growth in sales in fifteen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Croatian company ''Bijeli svijet'' (White world), in competition with more than a hundred companies from all over the world, has won yet another prestigious award. The global corporation LG Electronics has awarded Bijeli svijet with the ''Outstanding Growth Performance'' award for the fastest growth in 2019.

''Although we come from little Croatia, we're just one of more than a hundred partners of the Korean LG corporation, and for the second year running we're winning international accolades. Last year, we received the Best Partner Award, and this year the record growth we experienced was rewarded,'' explained Mario Martinek, Bijeli svijet's director.

Bijeli svijet has experienced impressive results on the Croatian market as well as on the markets of fifteen European countries, from Poland to Greece. As the sole strategic partner of LG in this area, Bijeli svijet achieves all it does through an innovative business model. For over ten years, this company's business story that has proven to be extremely profitable here in Croatia, and has thus been successfully applied across foreign markets as well.

The company's success story initially started from the B2B segment, when Bijeli svijet equipped professional laundry facilities of most of the well-known facilities in the HoReCa sector, such as Hilton, Falkensteiner, Radisson, Kempinski, McDonald's, Valamar, Maistra, Plava Laguna (Blue Lagoon) and many others.

They decided to share their knowledge and experience in the B2C segment as well, and back in 2014, they launched the Jumpstart program to help Croatian families who were seeking entrepreneurial pursuits by launching a mini-profitable laundry facility. They're unique in that they guide their clients step-by-step through the whole process: from raising grants to starting a business to opening and operating in their own facilities.

As a result, over the last five years, they have helped as many as 150 entrepreneurs successfully realise their business dreams, thus stimulating the employment of more than 300 people. Bijeli svijet's recorded increase is also consistent with the trend of increasing tourist traffic here in Croatia, which means, as was explained by Mr Mario Martinek, there's much more laundry to be washed.

''Namely, from 2016 to date, the number of beds in private accommodation has increased by as much as 127,600, while for hotels this number is 5,800. It's therefore not surprising that there is a growing need to open laundry facilities across the European market.

However, we're proud that most of them are open along the Croatian coast, from Umag to Dubrovnik, where most of the revenue is generated during the tourist season. Today, foreign guests are increasingly staying in one destination for only two to three days, which leads to the need for the more frequent cleaning of such facilities,'' explained Mario Martinek.

''We have a premium product and a premium service for service and accommodation facilities, which is why they choose us over the competition. When a hotel needs professional laundry service, we do a detailed analysis, project documentation and provide them with the installation, equipment, maintenance, consulting and everything else they need,'' says Martinek.

According to him, the story doesn't stop there either, as Bijeli svijet is transferring its best practices to its European distributors - on the basis of the company's model, laundry facilities were opened in Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Sarajevo and Podgorica. All this was achieved with the wholehearted support of the LG corporation, which selected them as their sole partner in Eastern Europe, and the efforts they make to educate citizens and numerous companies across not only Croatia but the wider region have been repeatedly recognised with prestigious awards.

There are twelve experts in the Bijeli svijet team, which gives clients security in business. They also have the most service partners in the country and products such as professional rollers, washers, dryers for utility and self-service laundries. The results for the customers are quite measurable: it is an annual savings of 25 percent on electricity consumption and as much as 44 percent on water consumption.

More than 1,500 satisfied customers and over 5,000 devices sold guarantee that this is not the last award for Bijeli svijet.

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