November the 13th, 2021 - The Croatian company Infobip, the country's first ever unicorn, now also has the largest number of shareholders. This Vodnjan-based company has gone from strength to strength and made truly remarkable progress, and it seems that isn't slowing down yet.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, the Croatian company Infobip has moved one step closer to the stock market. It is no longer just the first Croatian unicorn and the largest domestic startup to date, but also the one with the most shareholders of all. Infobip has also now launched its own ESOP programme for all of its employees, more than 3300 of them.

This impressive cloud communications company has announced that it will automatically apply the employee shareholder programme to all of its future employees.

Silvio Kutic, the co-founder and CEO of the Croatian company Infobip, says that ESOP is the most important initiative that rewards employees for their contribution to the evolution of the company through compensation in addition to their salaries.

''ESOP is a key part of the value offer of employees and that's why it's my honour to have the privilege to state that we've reached the point where we can make all employees part of our story of growth as shareholders,'' explained Kutic.

The Croatian company Infobip has had an ESOP before, but it's questionable as to whether it can be called that given the fact that it was very limited in scope. It was valid only for individual, key employees, estimated to number about 800. Now, however, the programme has become a company-wide standard and has included an additional 2,500 employees.

ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) is a programme by which companies add the option of acquiring an ownership share to employees' salaries. It is used as a form of reward and a tool for retaining staff.

Although one of Podravka's is considered to be one of the most successful ESOP programmes in all of Croatia, this type of employee reward programme is currently the most popular in the entire IT industry. According to a survey which was conducted last year, as many as thirty domestic IT companies have embarked on various ESOP programmes. Infobip was the first to do so, followed by Nanobit, while Rimac Automobili announced that they were moving in that direction as well.

Nanobit also made an ESOP but also of a limited scope. As was learned last year, Nanobit allocated 5.57 percent of the ownership stake to 30 percent of the company's employees. The programme, as Alan Sumina, the co-founder and CEO of Nanobit, explained at the time, rewarded people who proved to be key to the company's growth as well as a motive for attracting potential staff from elsewhere to come and work for the company, especially in the City of Zagreb.

For the listed companies, the option to acquire an equity stake is usually activated in preparation for the IPO. The Croatian company Infobip is planning its IPO for the end of 2022, ie the beginning of 2023. Then, just before being listed on the stock exchange, employees can convert their options into ownership shares and thus become "real" shareholders of the company after the IPO, meaning that they can then sell the shares they have thus acquired and thus generate additional income.

It should be emphasised that there are numerous variations of the ESOP programme, and some companies share such options with their employees, while some, as is the case with the IT company Span, which recently went public on the Zagreb Stock Exchange, have offered their employees the option to purchase shares on preferential terms. Regardless of which ESOP implementation model both companies and employees have chosen, this is a more tax-profitable way of increasing additional income in Croatia.

From Infobip, they explained that their ESOP plan is designed as an addition to the current employee compensation packages, and this means that it is the so-called optional ESOP model. Infobip launched the programme four years ago and back at that time, a 10 percent stake in the company was allocated to reward employees, but the entire package was not distributed at the time, as the ESOP was applied to a limited extent.

Kutic explained that this is a confirmation that the organisation is now in the next phase of the path of exponential growth, and if we quickly recall, it's worth noting that Infobip's revenue jumped 57 percent last year to 1.25 billion dollars or 7.74 billion kuna.

After receiving a 300 million US dollar investment from the US fund One Equity Partners in 2020 and taking over OpenMarket for that same sum, this year it bought the Split conference franchise Shift, and then the world's leading SMS firewall service provider, the Irish Anam Technologies. The value of these transactions hasn't yet been disclosed.

Recently, the Croatian company Infobip also took out a 500 million dollar loan from funds managed by Ares Management Corporation and funds managed by BlackRock, it also took over one of the largest alternative telecoms in the USA, Peerless Network. The company has made it clear that it will continue to take over and merge with others in the coming period.

''Our goal is to ensure that everyone is fully active in the implementation of our ambitious growth plan that we intend to carry out over the next few years, because in this way, employees will create value not only for the organisation but also for themselves as individuals,'' concluded Silvio Kutic.

For more, check out our dedicated business section.

November the 4th, 2021 - The Vodnjan Infobip company has gone from strength to strength over recent years, and now, with its most recent take over of an American rival, this remarkable Croatian company is edging ever closer to Wall Street.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes, the first, and so far the only Croatian ''unicorn'', the Vodnjan Infobip, is continuing with its ambitious expansion. After a financial injection of half a billion dollars last month, this company acquired the American Peerless Network, a global provider of VoIP (Voice over IP) services.

Although the value of the transaction remains a secret for now, it is on the trail of plans to go public in New York in late next year, or in early 2023. This latest acquisition comes after the Vodnjan Infobip company realised a 500 million US dollar loan last month with the main investors being credit funds managed by Ares Management Corporation and those managed by BlackRock, under the advisory baton of Morgan Stanley.

''This new financing places Infobip in an exclusive group of renowned high-growth and high-value technology companies, which have used a similar form of financing. This is Infobip's second round of external financing, after a significant strategic investment by the capital investment company One Equity Partners (OEP) in the total amount of 300 million euros from the second half of last year,'' the company said in a statement.

They don't want to talk too much about the details of the transaction, stating only that the payment was made with a combination of money and shares from Infobip, as well as the fact that the management of Peerless will invest parts of its ownership shares in the Vodnjan Infobip company. The conclusion itself depends on the green light of the regulator.

By stepping into the US market, Infobip is set to inherit a lucrative piece of cake of the ''voice over IT'' services market as Peerless is a leader in this segment covering over 93 percent of the US population. It has more than 4,500 interconnections in 49 (US) states and a turnover of nine billion minutes per month across more than 200 markets.

''By taking over the Peerless Network, we're accelerating our international strategy. This is a very positive thing for Infobip from a financial, strategic and operational point of view. It enables us to grow our business even more strongly over in the USA, which is in line with the strategy of the Peerless Network,'' said Silvio Kutic, the CEO and co-owner of Infobip.

“Together, we'll offer companies and people around the world our services through a truly global network supported by local teams. Of course, the goal is to provide the best user experience on the market. We have an exciting period ahead of us and big things are just starting to happen for Infobip,'' he added.

“We're very excited about all the possibilities that the combination of Infobip and Peerless will bring. It will allowsus to scalably expand our services, capabilities and offers to our customers. By combining our market-leading voice offering and Infobip's global messaging capabilities, we're creating a strong foundation to become a leader in the fast-growing cloud communications market,'' said John Barnicle, CEO of Peerless Network.

"This acquisition will, among other things, enable Peerless Network to provide comprehensive support to its customers who have business needs outside of the United States," he added.

The range of services boasted by the Vodnjan Infobip company enables companies to communicate with a large number of their customers via messages, e-mail or chatbots. Among their clients are massive world names such as Uber, LG, Sberbank, and their services are also used (among recreational athletes) by the very popular Strava application. Peerless, on the other hand, brings a narrower segment of communication, VoIP, under the umbrella of Infobip.

Thus, the joint solutions of the two companies would ultimately be able to process more than 30 billion monthly user interactions across a full range of communication channels in more than 190 countries around the world.

When asked whether the acquisition of Peerless completely exhausted the aforementioned financial injection, Infobip didn't want to specify. It is to be assumed that this is not the case since it was previously announced that they would consider several acquisitions before going public, and it was confirmed to Bloomberg that "the takeover cycle isn't over".

Plans for an initial public offering of shares on the New York Stock Exchange are in full swing, and if we briefly recall, the CEO and co-owner Silvio Kutic told Bloomberg back in May that after the completion of funding (the latest rounds) the company could be ready for an IPO in the next 18 to 20 months.

In the first quarter of the year, the Vodnjan Infobip company's revenue grew 57 percent compared to the same quarter last year thanks to the acquisition of OpenMarkets, after which the valuation exceeded 1 billion US dollars, seeing Infobip crowned with the prestigious status of a unicorn. This year, they also took over the Croatian Shift franchise and the world's leading SMS firewall service provider, Anam Technologies from Ireland.

Infobip's expected revenues this year should amount to 1.2 billion euros, repesenting very rapid growth compared to last year's level of about 720 million euros, or about 600 million euros achieved back in pre-pandemic 2019.

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, 22 Oct 2021 - The Vodnjan-based global cloud communication platform and leading regional IT company Infobip has been named the leading service provider in the Communications Platform-as-a-Service segment by the independent UK analyst house Juniper Research, it was reported on Thursday.

Juniper's new tool Competitor Leaderboard provides a visual representation of the competitive positioning of the leaders within a particular market sector.

It ranks stakeholders in terms of their market reach, innovativeness, growth capacity and financial, operational and marketing strength.

Infobip has been named an established leader in the CPaaS segment owing to the quality and capacity of its own CPaaS platform, solutions for text message control and filtering, solutions for mobile identity services and solutions for business communication through RCS messages.

That is also the highest ranking compared to the other analysed companies.

Last month Infobip was ranked the leading service provider in the mobile messaging space, placing well ahead of the next established leader.

Infobip today has 15 years of experience in the IT industry and employs more than 3,300 people globally, doing business through more than 70 offices on six continents.

In 2018 alone, 4.7 billion people used Infobip's services.

For more on business, CLICK HERE.

ZAGREB, 9 Sept 2021 - The international developer conference Infobip Shift, held in the coastal city of Zadar on 7-8 September, brought together 3,000 participants from around the world and an additional 10,000 online participants.

The event ended with Infobip co-founder Silvio Kutić's message that the company wanted to present Croatian know-how to the rest of the world and link domestic experts with the biggest global companies.

The event, which was addressed by more than 60 experts-speakers, presented the latest topics in the developer and IT world.

"We brought in one place representatives of global technology giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft and of excellent domestic startups, including Orqa, Robotiq, and Stemi, as well as a large number of people from Infobip. We wanted... to present to the rest of the world Croatian know-how and expertise as well as enable direct contact for our developers with the industry's biggest names," said Kutić, who is also Infobip's executive director.

Infobip, an IT and telecommunications company based in Vodnjan, in May this year launched the Infobip Startup Tribe program, designed to find and connect the most innovative domestic and foreign startups, step up their development and follow their growth. The program currently covers 54 startups from 34 countries and the company received more than 200 applications in a short period of time, Infobip said.

For more, make sure to 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.

July 16, 2021 - The Infobip Shift conference will be held this September in Zadar as the largest developer event in Europe this year!

After acquiring Shift, Infobip, the leading IT company in Croatia and the region, announced its plans for the upcoming Infobip Shift conference, which will be held on September 7 and 8 this year in Zadar at the Krešimir Ćosić Hall. The developer conference will bring together over three thousand people over two days, making this edition the largest developer event in Europe this year, reports Dalmatinski Portal. 

After Infobip organized its own DevDays development conference for many years, with the acquisition of Shift, both conferences were merged into one technology festival during which the best speakers from the developer world will gather, 60 in total, from companies such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe and many others. The Infobip Shift conference program will be held simultaneously on five stages. There will be three main stages, one intended for workshops, and the entire program will be rounded off by startups that will present their ideas and products on the Startup Tribe stage. With a rich conference program, time and a place for socializing and meetings have been provided, for which a thousand square meters are planned in front of the hall.

After the founder and executive director of the Shift conference, Ivan Burazin, was appointed a member of the Management Board for development experience at Infobip, his longtime associate Marin Tomičić was appointed project manager of the Infobip Shift conference.

"In a little less than two months, something truly unseen awaits us in this area. The program will be opened and closed by the performances of the co-founders of Infobip, Izabel Jelenić, and Silvio Kutić. In addition, we were able to secure the arrival of the world’s greatest speakers like David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework, and Val Head coming ahead of global IT giant Adobe. Finally, of course, we also took care of the part of the conference that guarantees fun, so that all visitors will be able to enjoy a unique afterparty after the end of the program. The young and motivated team gathered around the organization of this event is working hard to justify the high expectations and trust," said Marin Tomičić, project manager of the Infobip Shift conference.

He added that Infobip has almost 500 developers in Vodnjan, Zagreb, Split, and Rijeka, who come from all over Croatia.

"Previous editions of the Shift conference were held in Split, while Infobip DevDays were held in Tuhelj. In the wake of this rich spread, we decided that the Infobip Shift conference in the coming years, starting with this one, will tour the whole of Croatia without a fixed location. We want the conference to be held at a different location every year. Therefore, we decided to hold this year's edition on the coast in Zadar," he said.

The tenth jubilee edition of the conference will not only be bigger than any Shift so far, but the whole experience of following the conference will reach an unprecedented level. From speakers, partners and startups, to organizational meetings and educational workshops - Infobip Shift will be the most influential developer event this year.

"My vision since 2012 has been to create the largest global development conference, but also to strengthen Croatia's connection with the world development scene. Over the years, we have grown, and we are getting closer to our goal. With Infobip, we got what we lacked - the support of a large company to give the domestic conference that global caliber and become the leader," said Ivan Burazin, a member of the Board for Development Experience at Infobip.

Join the two-day Infobip Shift conference on September 7 and 8 this year. Discover the latest technologies and learn all from the world's top developers. More information about the conference, tickets, and schedule can be found on the official website of Infobip Shift.

For more on lifestyle in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

June the 2nd, 2021 - We recently wrote about the brand new Infobip Startup Tribe Programme which marked yet another positive step forward from the remarkable Istrian Infobip company which has made waves globally. More than 100 applications have since been received, from Croatia and the immediate region to European countries like the UK, to distant ones such as Singapore.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, in the first 48 hours alone, the Istrian Infobip company from Vodnjan received more than 100 applications for its Startup Tribe Programme. Most of those applications came from here in Croatia, then from the immediate region, from Slovenia through to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia, and then from the rest of the world.

Applications from startups from other European countries such as Great Britain, Sweden and Austria came in, and then they did so from Singapore and even the USA.

Nikola Pavesic, the leader of the Istrian Infobip's Startup Tribe, hasn't even tried to hide his enthusiasm for this more than encouraging initial response.

''For now, after the official presentation of the Infobip Startup Tribe Programme, the response is even better than we expected, and we had quite high expectations,'' said Pavesic.

He stated that he is especially pleased with the large number of applications from the rest of Croatia. He pointed out that they've been contacted by, among others, some already successful startups, as well as those whose time is yet to come, such as Orqa, Robotiq.ai, Parkley, Hubbig, Farseer and Sportening.

''Now we have to analyse them all and see what the best ones are, or what we could offer them, for each of these startups and projects,'' stated Pavesic.

To briefly recall, the head of Infobip's first startup initiative started his career at the United Nations in Tanzania, and moved to Infobip from Tokyo, where for the past five years he has run partnerships with Nikkei, the world's largest business newspaper and owner of the respected Financial Times (FT).

Infobip's Startup Tribe enables startups to receive financial support in large amounts. This assistance is offered in the form of loans for the use of Infobip's innovative products. In addition, the Istrian Infobip will give startups that become part of its ''tribe'' access to its know-how, as well as to a rich network of advisors and investors. Among other things, startups entering this programme will have direct entry to pitching Shift conferences.

Pavesic has already confirmed that he will not take a percentage from these startups, but that the goal of the programme is actually to grow together with startups in the Istrian Infobip tribe.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.

May the 26th, 2021 - The Vodnjan company Infobip, which has been in the news for all the right reasons more or less since its very creation, has created the Infobip Startup Tribe. The move marks yet another positive step forward for this remarkable Croatian company.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, this Vodnjan company's new Infobip Startup Tribe is the name of the newly established programme aimed at finding and gathering the most innovative Croatian and global startups, and accelerating and monitoring their growth and development. Under the programme, eligible startups can apply for amounts ranging from 10,000 US dollars to 60,000 US dollars worth of using Infobip’s communication technologies and use them to further grow and improve their own respective businesses.

In addition to the hefty amounts mentioned above, Infobip will provide invaluable know-how and direct connections with global investors and industry leaders to the startups involved, which can open the door to additional capital and new markets. In addition to numerous training sessions, the Vodnjan IT company will open up the possibility of making office space in more than 65 locations around the world available to startups, which, at the time of their growth and expansion, will certainly become a significant benefit.

In addition, the startups involved will have special access to the Infobip Shift conference, the recent acquisition of Infobip, which plans to grow into one of the largest developer conferences in the world.

An established department for startup ecosystems within Infobip

The Infobip Startup Tribe will be led by Nikola Pavesic, the director of this newly established Infobip department. Pavesic began his career at the United Nations in no less than Tanzania, and he continued his journey at the UN in Tokyo, where he has been living for the last decade. In addition to running his own startup, for the past five years, he has held a leading position for partnerships at Nikkei, the world's largest business newspaper and owner of the prestigious Financial Times (FT).

Pavesic will manage the newly established Infobip Startup Tribe programme, and in addition to leading the programme itself, providing support to startups and selecting registered startups, his task will be to form an advisory council consisting of some of the world's most famous investors and carefully selected partners from around the globe. The aforementioned partner network will contribute to a strong step forward of this Infobip initiative, and startups from their portfolio will have direct access to the equal benefits of the Infobip Startup Tribe programme.

"With this programme, we're showing that we're ready to invest in society, not only through our products, but also through all other resources at our disposal, and most of all with knowledge, experience and connections with the business and professional community. Working with startups will bring Infobip into direct contact with new ideas, ways of thinking and approaches, and these components enable companies to make better use of their own resources and technology in favour of a stronger and more positive impact on society.

I’m excited to have joined Infobip in the construction phase of the company as an even more powerful developer-oriented development organisation. Although it's a global initiative, we're especially focused on our climate because we think that this is a kind of milestone in the development of entrepreneurial and technological ecosystem, and that with a lot of quality work, we can significantly influence their development. I look with great optimism and enthusiasm towards the upcoming period in which we'll bring even greater value to all those involved through our cooperation with startups,'' said Nikola Pavesic.

The application criteria for the programme is rather flexible, all with the goal of bringing together as many fast-growing startups as possible. All those who have raised a maximum of five million euros of investment or have a maximum of 100 employees can apply, but the programme will also receive exceptions if they show great growth potential in their industry.

All interested startups that meet the above criteria can easily and quickly apply by filling out the form at startups.infobip.com.

"I've always had a special relationship with startups, and Shift, which is now part of Infobip, started as a startup conference. I'm really glad yo be coming back to my roots and that the whole initiative with startups is entering our new department for relations with developers,'' said Ivan Burazin of Infobip.

With this valuable Infobip Startup Tribe programme, the company has once again shown that it is ready to invest in society as a whole, not only through the transfer of its own products but also through all other resources at its disposal, selflessly giving them to companies that, much like Infobip, have the potential to grow and become a new driver strength for the Croatian economy.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.

May the 15th, 2021 - The Vodnjan company infobip continues to go from strength to strength and showcase just what a Croatian enterprise can do, even in a climate which still makes doing business more difficult than it should be.

As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, Twilio has 4,500 employees, generates 1.76 billion US dollars in revenue annually and has a market value of 51.85 billion dollars. It is a company that the founders of the Vodnjan company Infobip - Silvio Kutic, Izabel Jelenic and Roberto Kutic - most often point out as their main competitor. By comparison, Infobip has about 3,000 employees, revenue of 1.25 billion dollars, and last year its market value exceeded an impressive 1 billion dollars.

Due to the difference of 1:52 in relation to Twilio, the first Croatian unicorn startup is preparing to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of next year or at the beginning of 2023 at the very latest. As one of the preparatory steps, the Vodnjan company Infobip aims to raise a 500 million dollar investment by the end of August 2021. It will purchase its own competition with those finds.

Twilio will not be on that list because of its value, but which smaller competitors will be there is problematic to predict because it also depends on the aspirations of their own respective investors. That's why it's good to understand who, in fact, Infobip's competitors actually are and in which direction the business in which they operate is developing.

Cost control

Both Infobip and Twilio are engaged in a business that is quite exotic. There are SMS messages, connections to applications (apps) on the web and on mobiles, chatbots, emails, support for the omnichannel communication of brands, geolocation solutions and many other similar services.

Both companies have developed a variety of software, which, like Lego bricks, companies can integrate into their own web and mobile applications, thus communicating with their users more easily and securely. Infobip and Twilio are therefore communication platforms that sell their software as a service (Communication platform as a Service - CpaaS).

The main reason why companies that sell over the internet, and today that is almost all of them, have a need for their services is the necessity to control costs and communication to all their customers, no matter where they're located. This cannot be offered by any teleoperator, not even the likes of Starlink.

Although Elon Musk created the first true global operator with Starlink, meaning one that has its own planetary infrastructure, it doesn't offer mobile services. Large global telecoms, which form the backbone of the Internet, such as Level 3, Telie, GTT, Cogent and NTT, also show no interest in offering companies software solutions for specific forms of communication. The only ones slowly moving towards the field where Twilio and Infobip compete are Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Currently, another company that the Vodnjan company Infobip founders often cite as a competitor is the Swedish Sinch. It has a market value of 9.76 billion dollars, revenue of just under 1 billion dollars and more than 1,600 employees. Sinch follows a similar tactic and is intensively active in acquisitions.

Recently, Sinch has acquired SAP’s SAP Digital Interconnect business unit, followed by Brazil’s Wavy and the largest independent voice communications operator in the US, Inteliquent.

A European challenger

Infobip's competitor is also RingCentral, an American company that offers other companies similar communication solutions as Zoom and MS Teams. RingCentral, which had revenue of 1.2 billion dollars last year, also offers a communications platform as a service, forcing Microsoft and other major technology companies to potentially enter the segment.

Finally, there is another major European challenger in the mix, MessageBird. This Dutch company is particularly interesting because it promotes business in a very similar way to Croatia's own Infobip. It boasts of collaborating with giants such as Facebook, Google, Uber and WhatsApp and offering an omnichannel communication platform. Behind MessageBird are (financially) the largest VC fund in Europe, Atomico, Y Combinator and Accel.

In addition, the Dutch are also targeting expansion into the United States. Back in April, they raised a 800 million dollars investment to buy the American mail marketing company SparkPost, and this is just the beginning of the list in the CPaaS market, which also includes the Indian Plivo, the American Vonage Communications and many others, so it is obvious that consolidation will follow in the next period.

For more on Infobip and companies like it, follow Made in Croatia.

May the 7th, 2021 - The Vodnjan giant Infobip is very well known at this point for its wild success and seemingly almost constant acquisitions. The company has since announced its third large acquisition in just seven months.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the Vodnjan giant Infobip has announced a new, third acquisition in just seven months. This time it is the Irish IT company Anam Technologies, the world's leading provider of SMS firewall services. Infobip and Anam will now jointly provide technical solutions for more than 700 mobile operators globally, covering 64 percent of the world’s mobile devices.

The value of this acquisition remains unknown, and payment was made by a combination of cash and Infobip shares.

As they have pointed out from the Vodnjan giant Infobip, the acquisition unites the strengths of both companies in the segment of security in message traffic and monetisation with an even more complete portfolio of solutions from which both mobile operators and end users will benefit. Anam's team is now to join Infobip's department in charge of strategic partnerships with mobile operators.

Their business customers will thus have at their disposal a better and more comprehensive offer, which includes continuous 24/7 professional support, more detailed analysis and more accurate reporting, with an even greater number of direct connections to mobile operators from around the world.

"With the acquisition of Anam, we've strengthened our leading position in providing a high level of security and protection of messages to mobile operators and helped them increase value within their own sector, but also improve relationships with end users. I'm looking forward to our mutual future successes,'' said the executive director of Infobip, Silvio Kutic.

Infobip's communication platform processes more than 14 billion user interactions per month through a number of communication channels, in more than 190 countries around the world.

Business users of both companies will have at their disposal a rich offer of services, a connected solution for a superior end-user experience and a better solution for monetising A2P (Application-to-Person) traffic. Together, both companies will now provide the most complete supply chain globally in the A2P SMS segment.

This sense of excitement is also shared by Anam itself, whose CEO Darragh Kelly pointed out that this acquisition is a confirmation of the importance of mobile messaging in a growing digital environment.

“The security and integrity of mobile networks are key parts of the messaging ecosystem. In order for the industry to continue to grow, it's necessary, on the one hand, for the messaging channel to be successfully protected from spam and fraud, and, on the other hand, for the position of mobile operators, businesses and end users to be protected. We believe that we're achieving this by joining the Infobip family, which brings together the two best messaging companies in the segment of A2P communication security. Our joint product portfolio provides a rare and exceptional offer to mobile operators. By joining Infobip, we intend to continue our growth and provide added value to our users,'' said Darragh Kelly, CEO of Anama.

Both companies are consistently at the top of the global ROCCO report in the A2P SMS Firewall segment and are winners of the Juniper Future Digital Awards. The company also points out that Infobip and Anam share the same values ​​and culture based on team spirit and innovation with a strong focus on the experience of both employees and users.

To briefly recall, the Vodnjan giant Infobip took over the leading regional technology conference Shift less than one month ago, and in 2020 they concluded a sales contract with IT company Amdocs to take over the American company Open Market, a leading B2B provider of mobile messaging solutions.

For more, follow our dedicated business section.