August the 26th, 2022 - The Ukrainian IT company Eleks has now opened its brand new Split office, exactly half a year after the beginning of Putin's Russia's horrific and unjustified aggression against Ukraine.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, the Ukrainian IT company Eleks is a global software engineering company with around 2,500 employees based across Europe and the USA, which, even before the attack on their homeland, began to expand and chose Croatia as one of its locations in Europe.

At the beginning of the year, more precisely at the end of January, it was registered as a company in the court register, but the preparation process itself began months earlier.

Partners to the world leaders

The events of the horrendous war in Ukraine following Russian invasion only accelerated these activities, but even before the first shelling took place, 20 families of Eleks employees had arrived in Croatia from Ukraine. Offices have since been opened in Zagreb and now in Split. According to Marko Modrusan, head of the Croatian branch of the Ukrainian IT company Eleks, most of the employees are Ukrainian nationals, numbering around one hundred. They're mostly from the areas most affected by the war's unfolding events and engaging in their work there is impossible.

The remaining 30 members of Eleks' team are Croats. Since the City of Split was chosen as the business base here in Croatia, the largest number of them are of course located in Split, where there are 85 employees. There are also 25 in Zagreb, and they also have 20 employees in other cities spanning Croatia.

Eleks has otherwise been operating for 31 years, providing ICT solutions and consulting services. The founders are Oleksij Skripnik and Ihor Skripnik, and in the meantime managers have joined the ownership structure. Last year, the company achieved a revenue of 62 million euros, it is recording continuous growth and is also expanding on the international market.

They cover market niches from custom software development for client needs to product design and technology consulting. Thanks to such a wide and varied spectrum of activities, they say they are partners with many of the world's leading companies, as well as technology startups.

The Ukrainian IT company Eleks has its 17 offices in 13 countries spanning three continents, of which in the area of ​​European countries, in addition to Croatia, there are offices in Poland, Estonia and Germany, and Great Britain. They already have offices across the pond in the USA, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, and after Croatia, the intensification of their business will follow in their already opened office over in Tokyo.

"The decision to expand in Croatia was a logical step in our business growth strategy," explained Andrij Krupa, the president of Eleks. "We plan to further expand our team and develop ICT solutions, professional services, customer support and increase the possibilities of providing services to current and future markets," added Krupa.

When asked why the choice for the central office in Croatia fell on Split, Modrusan explained that as part of the consideration and search for the best location, care was taken to ensure that it would be a location in Croatia that would be suitable for the application of the "work and holiday" working model. This means that Eleks employees from any of their branches in other countries will be able to come to Croatia, work for a few weeks, and then use the opportunity for an annual holiday in Croatia.

Due to its location, the City of Split is rated as ideal, because the nearby islands, the southern and northern coasts and excellent traffic connections are within reach, and the city is large enough to provide the necessary comfort and amenities to their employees.

Vladimir Putin's attack increased their workload

When asked how Eleks will function here in Croatia and who their clients will be, Modrusan says that Eleks has a delivery centre in Croatia, and most of the partners will be from European countries and from the USA.

However, it is also expected that the new centre for the realisation of projects in Split will work to strengthen the regional presence and strengthen the partnership with new clients in Southeastern Europe.

"We're excited to contribute our experience and expertise to the quality of software development and also to meet the growing demand for software development and digital transformation in the region. We're looking forward to being a part of the local IT community where we will certainly participate in its construction,'' pointed out Modrusan, inviting Croatian software experts to join the Eleks team, as they are planning further expansion.

Despite the attacks of the Russian army on Ukraine, Eleks didn't stop working, quite on the contrary, they received increased requests for jobs, which is why the need for new employees is growing.

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

March 21, 2022 - IT company Newfire Global Partners has transferred some of its employees in Ukraine to Croatia, specifically Zagreb and Osijek.

The American company, founded in 2016, operates on four continents and in eight countries, has four offices in Ukraine, three in Lviv, and one in Ivano-Frankivsk. Newfire Global Partners also has offices in Zagreb and plans to open them in Split, reports Index.hr.

However, due to the crisis in Ukraine, Newfire Global Partners decided to offer employees in Ukraine the possibility of moving to Croatia, where another office is being opened in Osijek due to the war.

"We decided to help our employees and members of their families in Ukraine to come to Croatia, which proved to be a safe location. Therefore, we organized a private bus from Lviv to Osijek and Zagreb. As a result, we transported our employees and their children and immediate family members," explained the director of Newfire Global Partners, Stephen Hau.

"From the first day, the City of Osijek has supported our employees and plans to open an office. We look forward to working with and empowering the local business community by opening another office in this beautiful city and creating new jobs. Namely, we plan to hire about a hundred new team members by the end of the year, and we invite all those interested to contact us," he said.

Tetyana Tsyupka worked in Lviv as a business analyst but is now in Zagreb. 

"I come from a beautiful ancient city in western Ukraine - Lviv. The city's geographical location was why we decided to leave Ukraine and why we did it quickly. I woke up on February 24, did what has become my routine in recent months - checked the news, and what I saw was terrifying. Russia declared war on Ukraine. I was scared and didn't know what to do," she said.

"My priority is the safety of my children. I have two children, one is 12, and the other is nine. My husband and I were shocked, but we soon heard sirens, woke up the children, and went to a shelter in the basement. It was the worst day of my life because I had to tell the kids to wake up and get dressed quickly because the war started," she says.

"After that, we decided to cross the border with Poland. We didn't know how safe it was, but we succeeded after six hours of waiting at the border. My children, my husband, and I," she said, adding that she and her husband's parents live in Lviv, and the situation in that city remains tense.

She said she was very grateful to all Croats for their emotional support, both from colleagues and ordinary citizens she did not know.

"My daughter had a stomach ache, but the doctor was highly empathetic and professional. Luckily it was nothing serious. Also, my son played rugby in Ukraine; we wanted him to continue training in Zagreb. Rugby club Zagreb offered to go to free training," she said, adding in the end that we should be with Ukraine in this dramatic time.

Newfire Global Partners employees, partners, and friends have raised about $200,000 for various humanitarian associations and organizations in Ukraine, and the second round of donations is underway.

The company "doubles" each donation by paying the same amount and will continue to help in all possible ways. Thus, the Lviv-Osijek bus will continue to transport employees and members of their families. If one of the employees is called up for military service, they will financially support him and members of his family.

For more, check out our lifestyle section. 

March the 2nd, 2022 - The well respected and heavily read Financial Times (FT) has listed the IT company Syntio as the fastest growing company of its kind in the Republic of Croatia.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the IT company Syntio, a Croatian cloud-based IT engineering company, ranked 225th on the prestigious list of The Financial Times (FT 1000) of Europe’s fastest growing companies.

If we look exclusively at the position in the IT sector, then the IT company Syntio took 55th place in all of Europe, meaning it took first place at the national level of Croatia, with a growth of 673.74 percent in the period from 2017 to 2020. Six more companies from Croatia are also on the list of one of the most reputable business papers in the entire world.

“We founded the company in Zagreb five years ago, in 2017 to be precise. Since then, we've opened branches in the United States of America and Denmark and grown to almost 90 employees. The fact that the Financial Times has included us on this prestigious list is a confirmation that we're developing the company in the right direction, that we are doing quality things and is an additional incentive to continue investing in the development of our services and products,'' pointed out Davorin Cetto, who founded the company alongside Tomislav Domanovac.

Their impressive client portfolio includes leading multinationals in retail, telecommunications, finance and pharmaceuticals, and they see their role in the market through linking data engineering, cloud technology and innovation. In particular, Syntio is one of the leading Google Cloud data engineering partners at the highest level, for the Nordic region primarily, but also globally. In the Nordic region, they work with several large companies to design and create data platforms that enable customers to use data, with the goal of achieving the best business results. In addition to Google, they're partners with Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure.

The well known FT 1000 is the annual list of the fastest growing European companies published by The Financial Times in cooperation with the German statistical company and the Statista portal, and it's been going on for six year now. It shows the companies that have achieved the highest growth rate between 2017 and 2020, and in order to get on the list, they had to achieve a minimum growth of 36.5 percent.

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