With its new capital, the successful Croatian company Include is expected to expand its product offering in the smart cities area.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 12th of September, 2019, the Republic of Croatia's largest VC fund, Fil Rouge Capital, has invested a massive four million kuna into the Solin-based startup Include, founded and managed by innovative entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš.

The young entrepreneur and Incude CEO boasted on Facebook that this was a step closer to the company's informal goal of as much as thirty million kuna in investment, which is an aim he had set for himself by the end of this year. Previously, Include had raised 15 million kuna through Funderbeam, bringing the total investment in 2019 to the most famous Croatian smart bench manufacturer up to an impressive 19 million kuna.

Ivan Mrvoš, founder and CEO of Include, posted about Include's latest investment on Facebook, saying it was an important day for his company.

"Fil Rouge Capital - FRC has invested four million kuna, which means that in 2019 we have (so far) secured as much as 19 million kuna through investments and now an incredibly challenging period awaits us in which we plan to open offices in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom..., and to present several new and significantly more advanced technological solutions for smart cities by the end od 2020,'' Include's boss wrote.

Just how much this new investment has increased Include's market value remains, however, unknown. After the Croatian company's last campaign via Funderbeam, it exceeded one hundred million kuna. Mrvoš also boasted that one of the four largest auditors in the world estimated that Include, at that time, was worth an incredible 110 million kuna.

With its new capital, Include is thus expected to expand its product offering in the smart cities area. Mrvoš, on the other hand, revealed back in early July this year that he wanted to build his own campus. The idea is that it would be spread over 15,000 square metres and would accommodate not only new product development and manufacturing, but also employee living spaces.

That idea is something similar to what another wildly successful Croatian company called Infobip is already doing in Croatia, but Mrvoš wants the new campus to be like the first Croatian smart city.

Ivan Mrvoš appeared on Forbes' prestigious list of 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing & Industry for 2019 in Europe back in February. His company is already present in more than 260 cities and on 44 markets worldwide with its innovative products. Otherwise, Include had its very first investment round in 2017, and has come a very long way since.

He then raised 465,000 euros in capital through Funderbeam. Since then, larger private domestic investors also started recognising Include's huge potential and began investing in the company. Among them is Stjepan Talan, the owner of Solvis, a company known for its solar panel manufacturing, which has invested four million kuna in Include. Mrvoš claims that foreign funds are also beginning to show interest, too.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for more information on Include's products and much more on Croatian innovation, entrepreneurs, companies and startups.

Ivan Mrvoš, one of Croatia’s top innovators, entrepreneurs, and founder of the Solin company 'Include' can already boast a big year. Back in February, his smart benches secured him a spot on the Forbes ’30 Under 30 List’ in the Manufacturing & Industry category for 2019 in Europe. Shortly after, he started recapitalizing the company in which he raised 15 million kuna. The serious interest of investors is testified by the fact around 7.5 million was collected just on the first day - and Include's current value has risen to 110 million kuna, reports Index.hr on July 1, 2019.

Include has tremendously grown in five years and will exceed 50 employees by the end of summer. The company currently has open bids for 14 positions, and for those interested who are not from the Split area but want to work at their headquarters in Solin, they also offer accommodation. 

Namely, the end of summer, Include will employ 55 people and build a development team of 18 people to work on new products - and for Index.hr, Mrvoš even revealed his ambitious plans to construct a campus of 15,000 square meters. Thus, if this project is realized, it will be the first Croatian smart city for production, but will also house Include employees who are not from the Split area to permanently solve the problem of accommodation and output.

“We are negotiating with several investors and banks, and next year they would begin building the first Croatian smart city, a campus that would probably be located in the wider surroundings of Split. Whether it will be in Split, Solin, Klis, we still do not know. We are speaking to some of the mayors, so we'll see how that is going to develop. The idea is to make a production plant that would have about 4,500 square meters, with offices, production, laboratories and even a co-working area for startups from this area that are just beginning. Also, within the campus, there would be 30 apartments that would be used by Include employees who are not from this area, free of charge. That project would cost a total of about 28 million kuna. This is all still in the negotiation stage, but by the New Year we will definitely know whether we are going to do it or not,” said Mrvoš for Index.hr.

You can read the full interview on Index.hr.

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Young Solin-native Ivan Mrvoš and his company Include achieved impressive business results last year, emerged on new markets, and recently launched a new product - the Monna cycling point, reports Dalmacija Danas on May 18, 2019. 

Just how well Include is doing can be seen by the ongoing Funderbeam campaign, which has already raised almost 1.5 million euros from four hundred investors around the world, half of whom are from Croatia.

The success of the Funderbeam campaign, which lasts for a few more days, has come to the attention of a well-known business portal Business Insider, which has included an extensive feature about Mrvoš, Include, and their successful campaign. This is an incredible recognition for Mrvoš and his Include team as Business Insider is read by millions of people around the world, including a number of entrepreneurs, investors and businesspeople.

In its text, Business Insider emphasizes, in particular, that this Include investment cycle is geared towards gathering resources for business expansion. Not only for new products but also for new ways of doing business.

They mention Monna which, apart from being a smart bench with a charger for various devices and a charging station for electric bikes, comes with a screen where you can display ads.

Mrvoš has expressed that he would like to move into the direction of advertising. Namely, he and Include are planning to extend their product line in the future with smart bus stops and waste bins, which would also be equipped with screens to show ads. Furthermore, advertising space and software which runs the entire Include system will be sold to other companies as a way to earn profit. 

As Business Insider points out, "Mrvoš wants to create an online advertising network in the physical world that would have a reach like Facebook or Google today on the Internet."

To achieve this ambitious plan, Mrvoš needs 4 million euros. According to current data, they are almost halfway there. 

Ivan Mrvoš took to his Facebook to share his excitement about the Business Insider feature. 

You can read the full story on Business Insider.

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The highly successful Croatian company ''Include'' recently celebrated its fifth birthday, and today this remarkable company has had its worth valued by an independent auditing house, and that worth has been estimated at more than 110 million kuna.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 15th of May, 2019, Solin's Include, a Croatian company which produces smart benches headed by young entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš, is continuing to go from strength to strength. Mrvoš recently confirmed the first direct investor in a new investment round. That investor is no less than Stjepan Talan, the director of the Varaždin-based company Solvis. Solvis currently employs 180 people, and back in 2017, this company recorded more than 600 million kuna in revenue. In addition, the company has been listed on the London Stock Exchange for the past two years among the 1000 companies that inspire Europe.

"For the last ten years, my company, Solvis, has been successfully doing business and selling its solar panels on global markets. I'm looking at the company Include with perspective, and, considering the fact that it works in the same industrial sector, I think this investment can contribute to the betterment of overall business, primarily synergy between Solvis and Include,'' stated Solvis' Stjepan Talan.

Cooperation between Include and Solvis started back in 2015, and otherwise, Include launched a new investment round twenty days ago, via the Funderbeam platform, and up until now, an impressive eleven million kuna has been raised by 450 investors from Croatia and across the world. In addition to the money raised by Include through the platform, negotiations with several private investors such as Stjepan Talan and the total investment amount (private investors and the Funderbeam platform) that sum could reach up to thirty million kuna.

Include exports eleven products to 43 global markets, and are present in 260 cities around the world. The company's worth was estimated at 110 million kuna this year by an independent auditing firm. Owing to its innovative, smart urban furnishings, the Croatian company has already won several much deserved awards and recognitions, such as Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 and Forbes' 30 under 30 award for its founder, Ivan Mrvoš.

"We're exceptionally pleased that this cooperation with Solvis has given us a new dimension,'' said Include's Ivan Mrvoš.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.

Croatia's ''Include'' continues to go from strength to strength in the face of an unforgiving system and even less forgiving employees of the state bodies, proving that where there is a will, there's a way, even if you happen to be in Croatia.

We often hear all about how Croatian companies are failing due to either the lack of will or, more frequently, the truly insane amount of red tape and obstacles placed before anyone who wants to make something for themselves by the state and an old, outdates and senseless system of bureaucracy. 

As unoiled the cogs continue to turn in the Office(s) of the Uhljeb in state institutions of all kinds up and down the country, the unsackables continue to undermine and chip away at the determination of the doers and would-bes from behind their perspex windows.

Faced with an entire forest's worth of paperwork, more stamps than a border control officer and usually an unacceptably hostile attitude from the state employee (also known as the unsackable) dealing with them, many would-be entrepreneurs give up quickly and head elsewhere in search of their dreams. However, as big as Croatia's problem in this regard really is, not everything is so bleak.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of May, 2019, just six days after the launch of another Funderbeam SEE group fundraising campaign, Ivan Mrvoš and his highly successful company ''Include'' raised a massive 1.22 million euros in equity, making Include's campaign the largest ever on Funderbeam globally.

The director of Funderbeam SEE, Damir Bićanić, commented that Mrvoš is pushing the records of the platform with Include yet again: "With their first campaign, they collected what was then the largest sum on the Funderbeam platform, and although sum has risen in the meantime, they collected more than any other campaign in just six days on the platform once again, globally.''

After Include's first successful campaign when they collected 465,000 euros on Funderbeam back in 2017, this time their first campaign goal of 1.2 million euros was met in a mere six days, and investors still have the opportunity to meet the target of two million euros.

"We're very pleased that after six days we've reached the minimum planned goal. I think that this, as well as 290 investors from 21 countries, are the indicators that we're doing a really good job. I believe that the amount of investment in the remaining days will grow steadily, although we're already the most successful Croatian crowdinvesting campaign on the platform ever,'' stated Include's founder Ivan Mrvoš.

Make sure to atay up to date by following our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.

When it comes to results, Croatia's Include published an impressive 115 percent growth in revenue in the first quarter of the year, and an average selling price growth of almost 40 percent.

As Tomislav Pili/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of April, 2019, one of the main stars of the Croatian startup scene, entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš, is continuing to impress. Just two years after Include's first capitalisation through Funderbeam, recapitalisation is about to happen again, aiming this time at almost ten times the amount. Before today's public announcement of the campaign, Include's main man revealed that his company, which is a top Croatian manufacturer of solar powered benches, is collecting part of the finances through Funderbeam while the other part will be provided by private investors.

"After the successful first round of investment back in 2017, when we raised about 3.5 million kuna with a 30 million kuna valuation, we decided to enter a new round of recapitalisation. We didn't set a fixed amount, but we expect that the investment will be at least 20 million kuna, with the potential to reach approximately 30 million kuna. As for Funderbeam's part of the investment, we're expecting to raise about 10 million kuna through the platform,'' said Include's boss Ivan Mrvoš. At the moment, he has secured about 10 million kuna from the Funderbeam platform and is actively discussing the additional funds with several potential investors, including private individuals and venture capital funds.

"Right now, I can't say which investors are involved, but they're people who have led or are currently leading various Croatian industries, which we consider to be a significant indicator," he pointed out. When asked how much shares in Include now sell for and how much the company is valued at, Include's founder explained that things are a bit different now than they were back in 2017.

"The company has four years of business behind it and some remarkable results have come to fruition, so we decided to hire one of the companies from ''The Big Four'' to do a valuation. What I can say is that it was a very intensive process that lasted for several months, and the company was estimated at 110 million kuna last week,'' says Mrvoš.

"The company ended last year with a positive result, and we also continued things successfully during the first quarter of this year, with 60,000 kuna of net profit," Mrvoš revealed.

The collected money will certainly go into the development of existing markets, but also to conquering new markets.

"We intend to strengthen our presence on existing markets and continue to build a global distribution network. In addition, we're beginning with the development of new products that will be complementary for the existing markets, and intended for those same markets, and we'll also get some more advanced equipment for our development and production activities,'' explained the talented young entrepreneur.

The trading of Include's tokens at Funderbeam was stopped on April the 1st this year due to campaign preparation, and the latest market price is 3.5 euros. The director of Funderbeam Damir Bićanić explained that the price of the shares will not be one euro as they usually are in Funderbeam's campaigns, but higher, meaning more specifically that they'll reflect the company's new valuation.

The leading investor, as was the case in 2017, will be Ivana Šoljan who says that Include will certainly pass at least one recapitalisation, and "hopefully maybe go to the stock market in the future.''

"Mr Ivan Mrvoš and his whole team have advanced tremendously. Organisationally, they did well, they wrote regular reports to investors, they're not late with deliveries, they plan things smartly - they're ready for a new round,'' concluded Šoljan.

Make sure to follow our dedicated business and Made in Croatia pages for much more.

Click here for the original article by Tomislav Pili for Poslovni Dnevnik

The Croatian company Include from Solin has strengthened its exports, entered the Polish and even the Chilean markets, a new investment round is on its way, and of course greater production and employment will naturally follow that.

As we reported recently, during the first quarter of 2019, this remarkable Croatian company from Solin recorded some excellent export performance, and it seems that Include is just going from strength to strength.

As Marta Duic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 7th of April, 2019, the amount of orders placed, when compared to just one year ago during the first quarter of 2018, increased by a massive 109 percent to 2.3 million kuna, while Include's total income increased by an equally impressive 115 percent.

"The first quarter is always frozen in our [type of] business. So far, we haven't achieved significant results during Q1, as plenty of markets are still covered in snow, and the first installations take place during the spring. But the first quarter of this year has been the best quarter ever since we've been doing business,'' stated Include's founder and director, Ivan Mrvoš, before going on to reveal everything Include has been busy doing since the beginning of 2019 alone.

This includes a new two-year distribution agreement with Deutsche Telekom, featuring fifty global markets; the sale of 44 Steora smart benches, a move worth more than 1.1 million kuna, and the opening up of the Polish market.

Our recent article on Include's success reports on the fact that these Croatian smart benches have been delivered to numerous other European countries, such as to Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and to Spain. In February, a new order came from Montenegro, and then new doors outside of the European continent opened up to Include, and a new market was ''cracked'', that of the very distant Chile.

"That's how we managed to arrive to the last possible continent. I'm not counting the Antarctic," smiled Mrvoš. The month was completed with the deliveries of 27 smart benches to Greece, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Italy and Hungary. March resulted in orders for a new product - Monna cyclo benches for Dublin.

Include's entrance onto the Chilean market marks a new achievement for the Croatian company, whose products are gradually finding themselves leaving Europe and spreading further and further across the world.

Make sure to stay up to date with Croatian companies, Croatian products and services, doing buisness in Croatia and much more by following our dedicated Made in Croatia and business pages.

Click here for the original article by Marta Duic for Poslovni Dnevnik

Ivan Mrvoš, the young entrepreneur from Solin who recently made the Forbes ’30 Under 30’ list, reveals his plans for Include beyond the famous smart bench. 

February 12, 2019 - Another day, another stellar recognition for the thriving young entrepreneur from Solin, Ivan Mrvoš. 

Chances are, you probably already know a thing or two about Ivan, the CEO and Founder of Include, the leading global manufacturer of solar powered street benches. Their flagship product, the Steora smart bench, is already on 40 markets with more than 930 benches around the world. The Steora benches all have the same core - PV modules, device charging, Wi-Fi, ambient light, data gathering, cooling system, and the dashboard, though there are six different models with additional features - like the super bright 19" display of Steora Urban, or Steora E special features for indoor usage, and more. 

After they were named the European Startup of the Year in 2017, a large investment followed, and the recognitions haven’t seemed to slow down for Include and Mrvoš since. 

Last year, Ivan Mrvoš was nominated for MIT Technology Review's ‘Innovators Under 35’ award in Europe. In 2017, Include was selected among the 50 best innovators in Europe, and on that occasion, Ivan Mrvoš presented the company at the European Parliament in Brussels during the European Innovation Summit.

Back in October, Include won the “Rising Star" award by the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Program, which is described as a program that recognizes and profiles the fastest growing private or public technology companies in Central Europe.

Mrvoš wrote in a Facebook status then:

“Include – the fastest growing company of Central Europe in Rising Stars category by Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Program.

We are the first Croatian company to win in this category, with 1950% growth rate in the last three years of business operations.

Back in 2014, we started out with modest initial capital and big vision - to build the largest smart street furniture production company in this part of Europe. Four years later, with 35 highly skilled employees and products placed in 39 global markets, we can proudly say that winning the Deloitte Rising Stars award is one of our company’s greatest accomplishments so far.”

And just a few weeks ago, the first smart benches hit Qatar, prompting Mrvoš to reflect on the brilliant start to 2019. 

“Our new flagship product (Monna Smart Bench) has sold a total of 14 copies in the first 20 days - 11 for Canada, 2 for Denmark and 1 for the Croatian Market.

- We also sold 35 Steora smart benches worth over one million kuna (which is already the monthly standard that continues to grow), out of which around 20 are Urban and Urban + (benches that have a display for digital advertising purposes). We seem to be creating a new trend in two industries - street furniture and outdoor digital advertising - by merging them into one and further enhancing it because our benches and campaigns are accessed/managed through our web application.

- We’ve opened in one and a half new markets - Bermuda (officially part of the UK, and a week-long fight to decide who will go to install it) and Poland (a much smaller fight), so we are now in 42 global markets

- We’ve hired new employees - business developers, embedded software developers, python developers (ads can be found at: https://www.include.eu/job_opportunities)

- We have continued media coverage outside of Croatia: https://www.gulf-times.com/story/620188/Aspire-Zone-first-to-introduce-smart-benches-in-GC (installation of three Steora Urban+ benches in Qatar) although it is a mistake to say that these are the first benches in the GCC region - no, there are probably thirty or forty.

For the first twenty days - quite solid.”

Today, however, the 23-year-old from Solin has been named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list under the Manufacturing & Industry category in Europe for 2019. 

Ivan Mrvoš took to his Facebook to try to make sense of yet another brilliant acknowledgement. 

“Every time I think: 'ok, we've won all the recognition that could be won' and then life says 'wroooooong!'.

So, today I found myself on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list under the Manufacturing & Industry category for 2019 in Europe. As far as I can see - I am the youngest on almost all lists and the only one from Croatia (if there is someone else on the list - my apologies).

An absolutely huge recognition not only for my work, but for the whole team's work at Include. Great work, team.

And the year has started well, with only 1.1 million kuna worth of products sold in January.”

Include also shared the happy news of their founder and CEO. 

Bravo to Ivan and the Include team! 

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The famous Croatian smart benches have made their way to Qatar!