April the 27th, 2023 - The Portuguese IT company Xpand IT has been operating out of its Zagreb base for some time now, and has been hunting and utilising Croatian talent, of which there is a huge amount in tech.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/PD VL native tim writes, a specialised IT company for software engineering from Portugal, Xpand IT, has been operating from its Zagreb base since the middle of last year. Since then, they have hired Croatian talent, more specifically over a dozen IT experts, and they're operating with the ambition to keep on adding Croatian members to their team.

This Portuguese company is on the continuous hunt for Croatian talent from the blossoming domestic IT scene who will participate in the design and programming of their software products and the implementation of various solutions for international clients and who will fit into their global mission - to change the world for the better using technology.

Twenty full years of experience, 340 clients in 30 countries (mostly in the European Union and Brazil) and almost 400 employees deployed in six specialised departments - which function as independent production business entities in Portugal and Croatia - and sales centres in the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden. This company has an awful lot to offer Croatian talent, of which there is plenty in the tech sector.

As a global company, Xpand IT offers a whole range of services used by some of the largest national companies in the field of Big Data, BI & Analytics, Data Science, Middleware, Digital Xperience and Collaboration solutions. The company's experts cover a wide range of areas, such as near-real-time big data collection and processing, cloud migration, custom business reporting and analytics, data science, collaboration solutions, customer relations, layered solutions and tool development to improve a user's digital experience. It is precisely this breadth that has secured the trust of very big clients from various industries such as banking, healthcare, telecommunications and energy.

As such, Xpand IT has already developed some state-of-the-art solutions for companies such as Toyota, Just Eat, Commerzbank, LeasePlan, Altice, Vodafone, Ageas, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas. In addition, it has developed a mobile application (app) for healthcare service providers for several different platforms, which has enabled patients to schedule appointments and view their medical records. This Portuguese technology firm has also worked with various government agencies to simplify business processes and improve efficiency by integrating multiple systems that have enabled a centralised view of data and workflow.

The Portuguese company's decision to have a base right here in the City of Zagreb is all the more interesting considering that we mostly hear about the lack of Croatian talent in the IT sector because they escape abroad, hence the outflow of quality local IT professionals to other typically EU countries.

"In addition to the size of the country, the population, the market, legal or legislative framework, people in Croatia are also known to be extremely professional, dedicated and hardworking. This is what we need to continue achieving top results in technology," explained Paulo Lopes, the director of Xpand IT. In addition, this Portuguese IT company sees Zagreb as an attractive base for programmers and engineers from neighbouring countries such as Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and other countries in the region.

"There is a clearly defined process when it comes to this company's internal business organisation. If there's anything that sets us apart from other development companies in Croatia, it's the internal organisation of the business with clearly defined processes and the depth and breadth of communication: each of our employees is actively involved in finding solutions, not only in the domain of what they're responsible for, but at the level of the entire company,'' said the director of the Croatian branch, Dejan Kapetan.

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January the 19th, 2023 - The Indian unicorn Amagi has chosen the Republic of Croatia, more specifically Zagreb, for the opening up of its very first development centre outside of Indian borders. This is excellent news for the country and job opportunities are set to open up.

As Josipa Ban/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, while a fairly decent number of Croatian technology companies are moving their headquarters outside of this country's borders, we're also seeing the opposite, which is very important news for all of Croatia. The Indian unicorn Amagi has decided to open its very first research and development centre outside of India right here in Zagreb.

The office has only just opened, and hiring should begin soon, according to the media technology company founded back in 2008, which provides "cloud" content broadcasting services and targeted advertising solutions for broadcasting on TV and streaming platforms.

The Indian unicorn Amagi is, therefore, a global SaaS leader that provides video solutions "in the cloud". It isn't yet exactly known how many people will be employed by this company here in Croatia and just how much will be invested. However, the company has stated that they decided on Croatia because they had already cooperated with local experts, so they decided to use that cooperation for further development.

"The high level of productivity of Croatian experts, along with a good balance between private and business life, makes Croatia an excellent location for a successful high-tech company like Amagi. We plan to expand and we will do so both in and outside of Croatia," said Sanjay Kirimanjeshwar, the vice president of the Indian unicorn Amagi, who is also in charge of marketing.

As for the development centre here in Zagreb, he says that it is difficult to go into details about product development. "But what we can confirm is that their work will be instrumental in accelerating the growth of streaming TV and FAST, especially in technologies that include big data, UHD Graphics, Dolby Vision, JPEG-XS, machine learning and personalisation," revealed Kirimanjeshwar.

The brand new centre here in Zagreb will be led by Igor Marinic, Marko Horvat and Danijel Peric, and it should enable this successful Indian company to expand more into the European market.

"Thanks to the research and development centre in Croatia, we'll be closer to our users and will be able to offer them the technological support they need in real time," said Baskar Subramanian, the CEO and co-founder of the Indian unicorn Amagi, a company that sells its solutions across more than 40 countries of the world, whose client list includes the likes of ABS-CBN, AccuWeather, A+E Networks UK, Cinedigm, Cox Media Group, Crackle Plus, Fremantle and numerous other impressive names.

The arrival of Amagi here in Croatia was actually not publicly known, but preparations had been underway for some time now, according to an inspection of the Court Register, which shows that the company in Zagreb (Amagi Eastern Europe d.o.o.) was founded in April last year.

Besides the fact that the Indian unicorn Amagi certainly has its own calculations when it comes to the opening their first foreign development centre in Zagreb, it's clear that this is a great thing economically for Croatia and its experts who will now get the opportunity to work on the development of some of the most advanced video and communication technologies. This was also confirmed by a statement from Igor Marinic, the general director of Amagi Eastern Europe.

"Croatia has successfully established itself on the global technological map as a country which creates the best talent, therefore we're confident that the newly opened Amagi development centre will be one of the key drivers of further growth and success," he pointed out. The company also received an investment of slightly more than 100 million US dollars just two months ago (in November 2022) from the American investment company General Atlantic.

With the capital raised, the value of the company increased from 1 billion dollars, which was what they were worth back in March 2022, when they received an investment of 95 million dollars, to a whopping 1.4 billion dollars. They achieve 100% annual revenue growth and employ more than 800 people worldwide. Part of the investment will obviously also be invested in the newly opened development centre here in Croatia, but the exact amount is currently unknown.

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The IoT startup Aconno from Düsseldorf, Germany, opens offices in Zagreb and Osijek.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 3rd of September, 2019, after large and medium-sized technology companies from Germany started to show an interest in Croatia, development departments started to open here as well.

Croatian-German IoT startup Aconno, headquartered in Düsseldorf and working for companies like Vodafone, Bosch, Siemens, SAP, NKT and Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems, has just opened two development offices in Croatia. They will work on developing software and hardware for their IoT (Internet of Things) solutions.

Currently, the startup employs ten employees and initially plans to hire another fifteen IT professionals in both Zagreb and Osijek.

Miroslav Šimudvarac, co-founder and CEO of Aconna, which also runs the Troido software company and organised the largest Android conference in Southeast Europe in Zagreb, Droidcon, says he understands that the job market is under a lot of pressure, but also that they do have some very good experience with developers from Croatia .

“People in Croatia deliver what they say they're going to and their work is of high quality. We would love to be able to hire IT experts in the next few weeks, but we'll be pleased if we can complete the teams by the end of the year,'' says Šimudvarac.

He adds that they have decided to develop their business in Croatia because they want to enter into larger development projects with Zagreb's FER. The faculty sought a much more formal relationship for such cooperation, which included having a company registered in Croatia so that they could engage in larger and more complex projects and deal with it in financially better manner.

"Our cooperation with FER is so good that I can say that it's difficult to find such a partner in Germany in the academic world," says Šimudvarac.

Finally, he says they are considering moving part of the production of IoT devices to move from Germany to Slavonia. Šimudvarac says that it is crucial for them to produce in the EU. He points out that this is not the cheapest option, especially when compared to China.

''But production in the EU, so in Germany and Croatia, is the most optimal when it comes to speed, quality and price, and especially flexibility, because for example in Croatia there are very good craftsmen who can quickly deliver smaller series' of elements that we incorporate into our IoT devices,'' says Šimudvarac.

He states that they have opted for this expansion because Aconno has entered a new development phase. ''After four years of bespoke projects and 1.2 million euros invested in R&D, we have amassed a portfolio of about thirty of our own finished IoT products,” says Šimudvarac.

Aconno is the first commercial user of NB-IoT technology in Croatia. Šimudvarac explains that in April last year, Croatian Telecom (Hrvatski Telekom) launched the first NB-IoT network in Croatia, and Aconno immediately established the first commercial connection for the needs of a R&D project working for one client on that network.

"Because of the NDA contract, I can only say that it is a kind of portable panic button, or alarm. The point is that the user can carry it everywhere, charge it once or twice a year, and in the event of an emergency, can send their exact location to the cloud, or to the Internet, from anywhere, even from their basement or an elevator,'' says Šimudvarac.

He adds that they tested this IoT device in the centre of Zagreb and that it worked flawlessly. Afterwards, he points out, it was also presented in Berlin, where they were able to send a signal even from the Metro, again using NB-IoT.

He states that they use other wireless technologies, such as LoRe, Sigfox, BLE, WiFi, as well as other classic telecom networks used for IoT data transfer, such as 2G and 3G. Both he and his business partner, Thomas Hollwedel, a former Vodafone manager, say a turnaround took place this year in the IoT market.

"We have been on the market for four years, but now we're getting orders for tens of thousands of IoT modules for the first time. We are currently negotiating a deal that, if passed, would mean that we would be delivering 500,000 IoT devices annually at a cost of 30 euros per piece,'' explains Šimudvarac.

He explains that such interest in IoT is not concentrated solely in Germany. Clients, he says, come from other parts of the EU, then from North and South America and Africa. This is also reflected in the business.

''In its second year in business, 2016, Aconno was a plus-size business. In 2017, we had 400,000 euros in revenue, and next year we expect to reach 1 million euros. It's a rough projection because just one client can increase it further,'' says Šimudvarac.

The prerequisite for such growth is, as they interpret, that they have developed their own IoT technology. Aconno was one of two companies in the world to start developing technologies based on Google's IoT concept, and subsequently developed their own IoT software for it.

The software, says Šimudvarac, was put into open source and anyone can freely use it to create their own solutions.

''This is how we work with some twenty universities in the EU and in North America, but also with startups. Once, in just ten days we made a prototype of a smart cube, with which we received an investment of 1.7 million euros,'' concludes Šimudvarac.

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