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.

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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.

February the 2nd, 2022 - The Croatian Photomath app has been a roaring success, having gained a lot of recognition very quickly. The team behind it have now launched an interesting engineering blog on the popular blogging platform Medium.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the Croatian Photomath app has launched an engineering blog on Medium, an online platform with more than 100 million readers, where all those interested in getting better acquainted, as they say, "with life in the company" and everything they work on, can read about the ins and outs.

The creator of the Croatian Photomath app which works to help solve mathematical problems has announcing that they have something new in the works for months now, and their blogging project has now seen the light of day.

“We wanted to create a space where we can share our knowledge and experience with the community and show how, why and what engineers at Photomath do. We're going to write about how we work on our products, projects and technologies, and we can expect stories about #LifeAtPhotomath and interesting engineering topics at least twice a month,'' they announced from Photomath.

They currently have twelve active authors, and training is being prepared for a dozen more. So far, five topics have been published.

In one of the texts, Petar Alilovic, Android Tech Lead, presented Photomath's current news, revealing, among other things, that the users of the application are not only students but also parents and teachers. Last year, 5 percent more parents and 13 percent more teachers used this impressive maths app.

Among students, it is most often used by high school graduates, but it seems that after high school they stop using it, unless they choose a profession related to mathematics. According to data from last year, the Croatian Photomath app has been downloaded more than 220 million times worldwide, of which ten million users use the application every single day for various purposes.

According to Photomath's founder, Damir Sabol, the market potential is in a billion students who have to learn mathematics during their mandatory education and sometimes beyond it. Their largest market is across the pond over in the USA, followed by Russia, Italy, Brazil and Indonesia, while here in Croatia, they interestingly don't have as many users as they have abroad.

Last February, the Croatian Photomath app secured a massive 23 million US dollar investment from the American fund Menlo Ventures to further develop the app.

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February the 4th, 2021 - Marko Velic has moved from Facebook, at which he has worked for he past two years, to Photomath.

As Novac/Jozo Vrdoljak writes, The team of the world's most popular mathematical application (app) Photomath was recently made richer by the arrival of Marko Velic as the leader of the team for the development of artificial intelligence. Marko Velic has very extensive experience in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and the application of machine learning. He has worked for the Facebook Machine Learning team in the British capital of London for the last two years, while before that he was the head of the machine learning team at Styria.AI for four years.

With the acquisition of Marko Velic, Photomath has confirmed its intention to attract a growing number of renowned engineers, web and mobile application development experts and those from the field of machine learning. Since developing the app back in 2014, the company has grown to over 100 employees, while the number of users has exceeded an incredible 220 million.

''I've been following Photomath for years and I know that it has all the prerequisites for success - a top product, an exceptional team and an excellent understanding of the market and business. Since the field of machine learning in solving mathematics is still insufficiently researched, Photomath is an ideal ''playground'' for research and work in the field of artificial intelligence,'' said Marko Velic of his move, who is previously known to the Croatian tech and business public for his achievements in the field of artificial intelligence, for which he received his doctorate. He is also the author of several patents.

Damir Sabol, founder and CEO of Photomath, added that the main factor in their global success is having extremely talented employees who are alwas eager to learn more in a stimulating atmosphere.

''Our ambitions continue to grow and our goal is to invest in the development of artificial intelligence technologies that will be the foundation for hitherto unimaginable learning application possibilities. Bringing in Marko Velic from Facebook is a significant step towards that goal, as well as the future acquisition of top AI engineers here on the Croatian market,'' concluded Sabol.

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September 10,  2020 - Apple has recently declared the Croatian application for solving mathematical problems, Photomath, the application of the day.

Index.hr reports that Photomath is a mobile application produced by the company of the same name, whose founder and director is Damir Sabol. The Photomath app is currently used by around 195 million users worldwide, and the number of those who download it continues to grow. As Sabol said, Photomath expects the number of users to reach 200 million soon. Most users, about a quarter, are in the United States. It is followed by Russia, then Brazil, European countries, and Indonesia.

"We are glad that Apple declared us the app of the day last week, on Monday, which is important for our promotion. However, we are building our growth in the quality of our own product. We don't know what this Apple move will bring us in numbers, but it is certainly significant for us because something like that still needs to be earned. First of all, you have to have a quality app and a lot of users, and Apple has recognized that," Sabol told Index.

Sabol founded Photomath in 2014. Today, it employs 65 people in Croatia and 10 in Silicon Valley in the United States. The startup is known for the Photomath application, which allows users to draw a math problem and then get a solution for it and an explanation of how to come up with the solution.

At first glance, Sabol points out, it seems simple, but there is a lot of effort behind it, and a lot needs to be done. Therefore, Photomath is still focused on its (so far only) application and its further development. The application is, by the way, free, but its more complex contents are charged.

“Math is taught to a billion people in the world; it’s a big market,” Sabol says.

He adds that they had a particularly significant jump in the number of users in the midst of the corona crisis in April and May. Namely, schools around the world did not work, so many pupils and students looked to the Photomath application to solve mathematical problems and understand mathematical operations.

"We had many app downloads in April and May, while schools were closed due to coronavirus. Our app proved to be a great way to learn math," Sabol concludes.

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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.

More Croatian technology innovation helping pupils all over the world.