March the 30th, 2023 - The European Commission (EC) has finally given the green light for Google to purchase the Croatian Photomath, the brainchild of the remarkable entrepreneur Damir Sabol.

As Josipa Ban/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, as stated above, the European Commission, more precisely the body's Directorate General for Market Competition, has approved Google's purchase of the genius Croatian Photomath.

"The European Commission has concluded that the transaction does not lead to a distortion of market competition within the European Economic Area," the Commission's decision reads. With this decision, the conditions for the implementation of the takeover agreement, which Google and Photomath signed back in May 2022, have officially been met.

This will also be one of the biggest acquisitions of a Croatian technology company ever, and as touched on above, we are talking about the company that Damir Sabol founded back in 2016, which developed an extremely innovative application (app) for solving all kinds of mathematical problems.

Google requested the approval of this takeover from the European regulatory body for the protection of market competition on February the 21st this year, and the decision was finally made this week.

The amount for which Google bought one of the most successful domestic apps ever made, which has been downloaded as many as 300 million times, is still unknown, but it is speculated that it is an acquisition that could be one of the largest in the domestic technology sector to have ever occurred. So far, the biggest yet is the 2020 takeover of video game maker Nanobit by Sweden's Stillfront for 148 million US dollars.

The Croatian Photomath is registered right here in the City of Zagreb, but also across the pond over in the USA. According to the data kept by Poslovna Hrvatska/Business Croatia, the domestic branch generated a massive 5.85 million euros in revenue back in 2021. On top of all of that, entrepreneur Damir Sabol successfully attracted a total of 29 million US dollars of investments in a mere six years. The last one, carried out a couple of years ago, from Menlo Ventures, GSV Ventures, Learn Capital, Cherubic Ventures and Goodwater Capital, was worth 23 million dollars.

This is the third company that Damir Sabol founded and developed and the second that he has successfully sold. The first was Iskon, which was sold to Hrvatski Telekom/Croatian Telecom for 100 million kuna. He then founded Microblink, which develops mobile document scanning, and Photomath was created as its spinoff. Silversmith Capital Partners invested 60 million dollars in Microblink back in 2020, but Sabor remained a co-owner of this company.

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

March the 28th, 2023 - The recently held Invento Summit in Zagreb brought together the leaders of Croatian startups and others from the world of investment and technology, including Photomath's creator, Damir Sabol.

As Suzana Varosanec/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, over the last decade or so, the Croatian startup ecosystem has changed an enormous amount, and while young entrepreneurs used to depend on themselves and themselves only, they can now count on advice, mentorship and even money from those who have succeeded, and there are no longer so few of those here in Croatia.

Damir Sabol, currently the most talked about entrepreneur in the entire country, who is waiting for regulatory approval of the sale of his third company - Photomath - to the global giant Google, said from the Invento Summit that after the sale, the approval process of which is quite arduous, he plans to help others.

"I see myself helping other people achieve what they want," Sabol said, noting that everyone expects him to do something, and contrary to expectations, he believes that the time has come to dedicate himself to others. The power of giving back was also the motto of the Invento Summit regional conference, which gathered more than 200 experts in technology, business development and investments in Zagreb on Friday.

Sabol, one of the conference panelists, certainly has an awful lot of skill to pass on. He has been in the world of entrepreneurship practically since his student days, and as he recalled, when he told his colleagues from FER that he was going to found his own company, nobody believed him.

"The prevailing attitude was that you can get a job and work for others, but not that you can found your own company. We have to change that," emphasised the founder of Photomath. He also noted that we must work on better communication. "Americans know how to communicate well, which is very important and that's their advantage. In this country, on the other hand, neither the education system nor employers insist on having proper communication skills,'' stated Sabol, who continued in his belief that ideas should be shared and not merely kept to oneself.

Although the idea itself doesn't have to be crucial for success, it was not so in the case of Albert Gajsak, the well known 24-year-old founder of CircuitMess.

"He had an idea, but no plan on how to realise it,'' Tomislav Car, the co-founder of Infinum, and today the director of Productive, recalled the beginnings of this young and successful entrepreneur. Car is otherwise the only investor in Gajsak's idea, as well as the mentor of the business, which turned out to be a good and smart move, because CircuitMess currently generates revenues of 2.3 million dUD ollars and cooperates with Walmart, the largest retail chain in the entire world. This collaboration began when Car decided to pay for a plane ticket for a then young high school student, Albert Gajsak to go to a European robotics competition.

"My parents didn't have money for that ticket, so I sent emails to all the IT companies I knew, asking them to help me out," recalled Gajsak, who was bored with school because there weren't enough practical exercises for him to engage in. That was also his motive to start a private business, the product of which is STEM toys.

In addition to CircuitMess, Car also invested money and time in Rentlio, he said at the Invento Summit. It is important, he believes, that young people have a role model and that they understand that a lot can be achieved with a bit of hard work.

"I have a nice car, so when children stop me and ask how I got it, I tell them that they have to study and go to school, and they don't believe me. In Croatia, the prevailing opinion is that only politicians and thieves can drive a nice car," stated Car.

Sharing knowledge, and then money, was also the motive of the entrepreneurs who founded the Slovenian VC fund Silicon Gardens. Gregor Rebolj said that it is in their interest to help young entrepreneurs out. "When we help, we don't ask for anything in return except that they also help themselves and don't turn their backs on their ideas," he stated.

For more, check out our business section.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

September the 9th, 2021 - The Rijeka robotics startup Stemi has been invested in by Damir Sabol and the remarkable Vodnjan company Infobip, which has become widely known and well respected over the last few years.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, Infobip and Damir Sabol have invested in the Rijeka robotics startup Stemi, a startup which successfully developed the very first Croatian educational robot and created an educational platform around it that reaps good results across the Atlantic in the USA.

The trio announced the above at the jubilee tenth Infobip Shift conference in Zadar, and this is Infobip's first investment in a startup so far. The Vodnjan company has received many investments from others, but hasn't, until now, made one itself.

They didn't want to reveal any of the details for now, and instead, Stemi has stated that they are preparing a big surprise for the end of September in the City of Zagreb. Stemi has recently been heavily involved in the promotion of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in education, and has been supported in this by Infobip. In addition, Rijeka robotics startup Stemi is one of the first members of the programme in which the Croatian unicorn encourages young technology companies from around the world to use its technology - the much talked about Infobip Startup Tribe.

The Infobip Shift conference is being attended by more than 13,000 visitors this year. In Zadar, over 3,000 live visitors gathered physically in the Kresimir Cosic Hall, and over 10,000 bought tickets for the online following of the conference. Thus, this year's Shift conference, the first organised under Infobip, has grown into the largest developer conference not only in Croatia but also in Europe.

Ivan Burazin, Infobip's board member for developer relations, boasted at the opening of the conference that Infobip has the best communication platform in the world, which is sold according to the service model.

''This year, we're under the auspices of Infobip for the first time. That's why it's now called Infobip Shift, but we're still Shift and this year we're dealing with what developers are doing - problem solving,'' explained Burazin.

Izabel Jelenic, the co-founder and chief technical officer, then took the stage, greeted the audience briefly and told them that they were "just starting". This is the slogan of Infobip, which, after becoming the first Croatian unicorn, is strengthening its operations and actively taking over other companies. It first took over the American OpenMarket, then the Croatian franchise of the Shift developer conference, and then the Irish company Anam Technologies. That's why it is speculated that the market value of the first Croatian unicorn far exceeded last year's billion dollars.

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

December 16, 2020 - Damir Sabol and his co-founders Izet Ždralović and Jurica Cerovec discuss the Microblink expansion to the US market and beyond. 

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Microblink recorded 36 percent sales growth and secured an investment from Boston-based Silversmith Capital Partners that has invested in companies such as Webflow, ActiveCampaign, and Appfire.

Two years after securing a $6 million investment for their spinoff company Photomath, Damir Sabol and his co-founders Izet Ždralović and Jurica Cerovec have exclusively confirmed an investment of over HRK 370 million by the US growth equity fund Silversmith Capital Partners.

Damir explains for Netokracija.hr how the cooperation came about:

"In fact, it all happened surprisingly fast. Their approach and culture are quite similar to ours, and more importantly, they understand our business, products, and technology very well. They invest because they see the potential of our development and growth in an even bigger world organization. We believe that we will work well with them because their focus is on good products and customers. From them, we can certainly gain expertise in managing and organizing global functions, product development for the US market, and expanding sales in the US and other markets."

Although most of the public knows about Microblink and their technology primarily through their application that helps users solve math problems, it is in the wake of the B2B solution that Microblink has secured external capital for the first time - seven years after its founding. 

"This is the first time that Microblink has received external capital. With a strategic, long-term approach, we could independently, with the reinvestment of profits, develop a company that has become a global technology leader in its segment. This was the first phase in the company's development, and we still have even bigger ambitions. We want to harness the potential of artificial intelligence to continue to make products with a superior user experience that change the ways the physical and digital worlds interact, across all devices," Damir points out.

With the entry of such large investors, some things will change, and so will the structure. While Jurica Cerovec will continue in the CTO role and Izet Ždralović as CEO in Croatia, Damir Sabol will be a member of the Microblink board together with Sri Rao, a partner from Silversmith, and Darren Bassman, who also becomes the CEO of Microblink.

Bassman has so far founded BlinkReceipt LLC, which has been a partner of Microblink for 6 years, and Microblink considers it the best choice for scaling in the US and global market.

Microblink B2B solutions are digital products based on their core recognition technology, available to users and developers through the SDK or Web API.

It all started with PhotoPay, a system for recognizing invoices and payment slips, which Microblink piloted in Croatia in 2011 with Erste Bank, for the then-revolutionary application Erste mBanking, which this year, unfortunately, was replaced by George.

Building on the success of PhotoPay, the founders unveiled a new umbrella brand for their “mobile vision” SDK called Microblink at London’s Techcrunch Disrupt in 2014.

The introduction of the BlinkID is Microblink's most popular product today, which is no wonder given that during a pandemic, scanning documents without close contact is more important than ever. Damir points out that BlinkReceipt is potentially very important commercially.

According to Microblink, hundreds of millions of people scan more than a billion documents and cards thanks to their technology used by a whole network of clients in over 70 countries, in industries such as banking, where PhotoPay started, all the way to insurance and retail.

Given the active role of Microblink as one of the initiators of CroAI and Sabola as an ambassador of the Elements of AI course in Croatia, no one is surprised that Microblink sees the further potential of its products in additional investment in artificial intelligence. 

"We will continue to bring together top engineers, but also experts in all other business areas, especially related to customer relations, product development, and expansion into global markets. We continue to lead scientific discoveries and innovations in the field of artificial intelligence. For that, we need passionate and talented people, who exist in Croatia and who already recognize us as one of the top three employers in the field of IT," said Jurica. 

Today, Microblink has over 100 full-time employees in Croatia, and in addition to focusing on the US market, it will also target some new markets.

"In the new development phase, we will first focus on strengthening the team in America and opening up new opportunities in that market. We will not stop there and are thinking about expanding into new markets, such as Asia and the Middle East. The priority is to design products that will bring greater value in certain verticals such as digital identity, market analysis, online payments," said Damir.

Damir concluded that they see Microblink as "a global leader in a segment that offers complete solutions and is slowly climbing in the value chain that is being delivered." The new phase of Microblink development confirms the lessons of the last 10 years: B2B and profitability to gradually scaling the global market.

They add a new lesson: through the development of a range of products based on innovative technology, they enabled scaling that began with PhotoPay and continued through Photomath as a spinoff and a range of B2B products within Microblink, which with this investment becomes one of the best-funded technology companies in Croatia.

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Microblink, an R&D company from Zagreb, has developed the fastest mobile document scanner in the world, introducing a new product – BlinkCard. It is a scanner of credit and debit cards, which is sold as a software component for embedding into fintech mobile apps, which have become a hot topic in the last few months with the rise of mobile banking, reports Poslovni.hr on April 12, 2019.

Damir Sabol, the co-founder and co-owner of Microblink, said that BlinkCard is available as a test app for free at Google Play and Apple Store mobile app stores. He says BlinkCard is a sign of progress in the field of machine learning. "In the near future, we will be able to scan and recognise almost all personal documents in the world," says Sabol.

Microblink sells five software components that can be used to scan and instantly enter data from different documents, from invoices to official documents. The first product launched by the company was the BlinkID, a mobile document scanner with an extensive range of application. This product is used in the United States to scan US citizens’ identification documents at polling stations. US police also use it in several smaller towns to issue fines within three seconds.

In the United Kingdom, it is used by large insurers to enable their customers to arrange for the extension of the car insurance policies immediately via mobile phones by scanning driving licenses.

Damir Sabol says that the goal of their solutions is for users to be able to point the mobile phone cameras without any typing towards a document and gain data which can be entered into a form in less than a second. He adds that in the last six years the number of employees working on solving this problem has grown from seven to 90.

“Now we are working on the SecureVision project worth 7.9 million kuna, which we want to use to improve our technological solution further," Sabol explains.

Translated from Poslovni.hr (reported by Bernard Ivezić).

More IT industry news can be found in the Business section.

As Mia Biberovic/Netokracija writes on the 5th of April, 2019, Snapchat's camera is set to become even smarter, as was stated yesterday at the Snap Partner Summit. Namely, an expanded reality platform was presented for developers under the name of Scan, and among the first partners is Croatia's very own Photomath, which will now enable Snapchat users to easily solve mathematical tasks.

For a while now it has been able to be seen that Snap has been heading in the direction of expanded reality more strongly. This was yet more visible when the wildly popular app introduced real-world scanning, recognition abilities, and the possibility to purchase through Amazon, directly via the app. In addition, Snapchat's camera enabled song recognition through Shazam, and new, more interesting camera applications were presented yesterday, this means that Giphy will be able to recognise real-world objects and include a convenient GIF to match, and Photomath will recognise maths problems and offer users a solution.

Croatia's Photomath application has already risen to extreme levels of popularity. Back in November, Netokracija exclusively wrote about the Croatian app's impressive 100 million downloads. In addition, founder Damir Sabol then announced that they received a six million dollar investment. This partnership with Snapchat, which, when announced at Snap's event for partners, received a special applause, and will surely help make these already impressive figures even higher.

As Damir Sabol, the founder and CEO of Photomath told Netokracija, this collaboration is well positioned for targeted users because Snapchat and Photomath have very customised user bases and naturally coincide.

Sabol: The basic features of Photomath will be available through Scan.

Among other things, Sabol revealed that only one part of the application's functionality will be integrated into Snapchat's Scan:

Only the basic features will be available on Snapchat - specifically, getting solutions for whatever is being scanned. For all of the other features, and mostly for step-by-step explanation, Photomath is there. Thus, Photomath's founder believes that such a cooperation will open the way for new users because Photomath isn't intended for offering only the ultimate solutions to mathematical tasks, but a higher educational value through the solving process, and this can only be achieved through the Photomath application itself.

When it comes to the number of users, Snapchat is still lagging behind Instagram, but CEO Evan Spiegel revealed, as TechCrunch writes, in the US, Snapchat reaches nearly 75 percent of all people between 13 and 34 years of age.

We reach 90 percent of people between the ages of 13 and 24, in essence, we reach more people of that age than Facebook and Instagram in the United States, the UK, France, Canada and Australia does.

This also proves Sabol's assertion that the target group matches them. However, on the sidelines, what Snapchat's greatest asset is the will of the user to explore the world of expanded reality, which is something other social network platforms have not yet achieved. In addition to being an inevitable source of customer entertainment, this is also a great opportunity for partners, and examples of collaboration were presented yesterday, such as those with Netflix, or with the well known GoFundMe platform, to share news of various charity campaigns.

Scan will allow us to scan everything around us in order to interact with objects and living creatures, whether it is banknotes, monuments, or our pets in expanded reality. Otherwise, Scan was created based on the startup of Scan.me.

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Click here for the original article by Mia Biberovic for Netokracija

German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, in their annual review, has chosen Croatian mobile application Photomath among the top 10 applications of 2016.