A successful Spanish startup which has spread to 105 cities in twenty countries in Europe, Africa, and Central and South America since 2015 has begin operations in no less than Zagreb.

As Marta Duic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 23rd of April, 2019, Glovo, a fast delivery application (app) which allows customers to purchase, receive and send any products within the city within less than 45 minutes, has started its operations in the Croatian capital city of Zagreb.

"For now, Glovo has employed seven people in the ''core'' team in Zagreb, eighteen in customer support and fifty delivery people. Therefore, a total of 65 people are in employed in this operation, we're only just beginning, and we're also still actively employing people. The expectations are high because we think that there's a lot of room for first-class fast delivery on the Croatian market and the inclusion of a large number of partners in the on-demand economy trend. People are now accustomed to having everything at their fingertips, quickly and easily accessible, and that's what we provide - products from the entire city delivered within 30 to 60 minutes to the end user,'' stated general manager for Glovo Croatia, Teo Širola.

This Spanish startup started back in 2015 in Barcelona, Spain, and has since expanded to 105 cities, ranging from Paris and Milan and Istanbul and Nairobi, in twenty countries across Europe, Africa, Central and South America. More than fifteen million orders from partners such as McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, and the like have been delivered around the globe via Spain's Glovo app. They have more than three million users, 10,000 partners and work with a network that involves more than 30,000 couriers.

"The first reactions we've had have been positive. We still need to educate the market in terms of the service we provide and explain that what we do is exclusively delivery. Specifically, we deliver straight from the restaurant (or store) to the customer, effectively delivering the service as if the buyer picked up the food (or the item) themselves. This is different from the services that have been provided on our market so far, where more orders are delivered at the same time, so, let's say, the tastes and smells have been mixed, and the food that eventually comes to the customer's door is cold,'' noted Širola. Aside from doing deliveries by car, Glovo uses bicycles and scooters to squeeze through heavy city traffic faster, and offer a more ecologically aware delivery option.

"Zagreb is accelerating the transformation in the domain of fast delivery in Croatia, and our vision is to bring the practicality of technology closer to everyone," says Širola.

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

AMPnet is the best Croatian startup, and it's going to the big final in Krakow, Poland.

As VLM/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of April, 2019, AMPnet's platform focuses on energy cooperatives, an alternative model of sales for electrical energy and the financing of renewable energy sources. Mislav Javor from AMPnet pointed out that the product is now finished, and how their very first clients are knocking at their door.

With the winning project, AMPnet IO d.o.o. was proclaimed as the best Croatian startup this year between nine finalists at the national final of the PowerUp! competition held within the framework of the LEAP Summit, and organised by Invento Capital Partners in Zagreb.

The winning Croatian team will be presented at the Grand Final in Krakow, Poland on May the 21st, where they will compete for large cash prizes of 50,000, 10,000 and 5,000 euros, while the best project will be offered an additional investment of 150,000 euros as well as participation in the prestigious accelerator EIT InnoEnergy Highway, which helps in the transformation of startups, from their early stages of development right up to becoming a successful business venture.

Energy in a new way!

''We're very pleased with this competition organised by Innoenergy together with Invento Capital Partners. We believe that all of the teams have very high quality products, but we're happy that even with such a strong competition, the jury decided on us. We have been developing this product for two years and this victory is one of the moments that confirms that we're on the right track,'' said Javor.

''The PowerUp! competition by Innoenergy's winner, AMPnet, is a team that has a scalable product. Until now, they've shown that they have certain shifts in the market, they have contacts with potential buyers and have managed to attract investors. So, they only need an additional boost to reach the stage from which they can expand across Europe, and hopefully ultimately to the United States,'' said jury member Stevica Kuharski (Fil Rouge Capital).

''I'm truly delighted with the number of quality projects. This was one of the competitions where members of the jury had a difficult job choosing a project that would represent Croatia at the Grand Final in Krakow. What we can do, as a local partner of Innoenergy in Croatia, is to insist that many more of these projects are funded by Innoenergy, regardless of them having not been chosen today. The AMPnet project itself, and the team behind the project, demonstrated the highest degree of readiness, project development and market entrance possibilities,'' said Dalibor Marijanović, founder and partner of Invento Capital Partners, the local HUB in charge of supporting the aforementioned competition in Croatia.

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Click here for the original article by VLM for Poslovni Dnevnik

As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 14th of March, 2019, the Austrian capital of Vienna boasts as many as 5,830 IT companies currently in operation, which is more than are in operation on the entire territory of Croatia.

The Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) took with them as many as 32 Croatian companies, mostly from the IT sector, to Vienna's fifth international B2B Software Days.

Among them, the conference was participated in by King ICT, Megatrend business solutions, Mediatoolkit and Ekobit. Tajana Kesić Šapić, the director of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce's industry sector, said that the visit was organised in cooperation with the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, Advantage Austria, and the European Entrepreneurship Network who are interested in the Croatian IT sector.

"Over the last five years, IT companies' revenue in Croatia grew by 7.4 percent, and exports rose almost twice as fast, to 11.3 percent per year," stated Kesić Šapić.

Although the startup scene in the Croatian capital of Zagreb has been ''coming to life'' over the last few years, the same sector in Austria's capital city has been growing stronger at double Zagreb's rate. In Vienna alone, there are more IT companies than are in operation in the whole of the Republic of Croatia, an impressive 5,830 of them.

Vienna is investing more than the equivalent of a quarter of a billion kuna per year into the city's startup scene, and just like in Zagreb, the city readily provides all the necessary support for the free establishment of startups, up to half a million euros worth.

Goran Mrvoš, director of Infosite, one of the Croatian IT companies at the fair, said that in Vienna he realised that the overall awareness of digitalisation in Croatia was low, and that it created a market advantage for foreign competition.

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Click here for the original article by Bernard Ivezic for Poslovni Dnevnik

On 11 February, the application process for the fifth edition of PowerUp! begins. Participants have the chance to compete for the main prize of 50 000€ and the opportunity to develop their business on a global scale. The contest, organized by InnoEnergy, is the largest start-up competition in Central-Eastern Europe, including areas such as energy, mobility and smart technologies.

The competition not only offers a promising financial prize, but also the opportunity to join InnoEnergy’s prestigious business accelerator. The Highway® program, aims to develop start-up projects and adapt them to the European market. Those who join the program can expect support within a wide range of topics from legal and IP protection, to pitch deck design, to agile methodology, and more. Other benefits include accessing international clients, as well as financial investment up to 150 000€.

This edition there will be a new distinction within the competition for the “Clean Air Challenge”. This merit will be awarded to a start-up whose solution will contribute to the reduction of air pollution and smog. InnoEnergy is a key player in the Clean Air Challenge launched in October 2018 in Brussels.

With every edition of the competition, the number of participants has doubled. In the 2018 InnoEnergy received over 300 potential candidates, it is a fair estimate that the registration for the 2019 edition, which ends on 11 March, will end in further success.  In the past two years, the applications have grown both in scale and in quality. Applications with ready-made prototype have dramatically increased from 28 prototypes in 2016 to 120 in 2018. The same increase can be seen in applications with a functioning product or service (from 19 to 93 respectively).

“The number of participants is growing every year, combined with the fact that the start-ups which apply increasingly have projects in their portfolio on an advanced stage of development, shows the increasing recognition and rising prestige of the competition. PowerUp! opens the door towards development for courageous innovators from Central-Eastern Europe and enables them to access our international network of business partners. Participants applying to this contest can also see those benefits”, explains Jakub Miler, CEO of InnoEnergy Central Europe.

Particularly desirable solutions - products or services - in the competition include projects in the areas of energy, mobility, clean air, heating, cleantech, and smart technologies. Start-ups that pass through the application stage will be invited to participate in bootcamps run by recognized European business mentors. These workshops will prepare participants for the national finals and the Grand Final, in which they will present their ideas to experts. The winner will be selected on May 21st in Krakow during Impact '19 – one of the most important economic events in Central and Eastern Europe.

The 2018 winner of PowerUp! was Zubax Robotics from Estonia, which presented a solution to drastically reduce energy consumption in future mobility solutions.

Detailed conditions of participation, an application form, and all of the necessary information are available at www.powerup.innoenergy.com.

The deadline for the registration period is March 11th 2019.

Robotics in Croatia is a growing trend, with the constant advancement of technology and innovation, Croatia is putting both feet forward when it comes to developing not only robots, but knowledge.

As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 13th of December, 2018, one Osijek-based startup has successfully developed an autonomous robotic platform for cargo transfer and has since presented it to some major global players, names including Orbico, Atlantic and Tokić are now testing it.

The Osijek startup, Gideon Brothers, has thus developed the first Croatian industrial robot. What it involves is an autonomous robotic platform for cargo transport, within the scope of the ''warehouse of the future'' that is increasingly being used by the likes of Amazon and Alibaba, as well as numerous other major logistics and merchants.

It doesn't have a name, at least not for now, but the Croatian autonomous ''robo-warehouse'' has an enviable performance. It can work properly without interruption for 24 hours per day, every day of the year. Its battery allows it to withstand a shift of six hours per piece, and then when the discharged battery is replaced with full one, and the job can continue. It's also fast.

The new step forward in robotics in Croatia, which is also miracle of high technology in itelf, was developed by a team of five doctors of science and 26 experts in the field of hardware and software in Croatia. The robo-warehouse is also a very attractive business product. In less than two years since its inception, this Osijek startup has developed technology which is ten times cheaper and more powerful in collecting its environmental data than the type which is currently the most widely used - the LIDAR driving system.

One example of this are the systems used by Tesla motors in their cars and trucks. Gideon has upgraded LIDAR with its own solution that combines stereo cameras and artificial intelligence (deep learning).

When asked whether the robot has already been seen by some of the biggest global players, such as Amazon and Alibaba, Milan Račić, the co-founder and director of development of Gideon Brothers didn't want to reveal any specific names, while emphasising that they have indeed presented their product "to some of the world's biggest players".

What has been very openly confirmed is that the Osijek startup will target both small and medium-sized companies on a global scale with its product.

"Such robots enable small and medium-sized companies to boost their efficiency and come up to the scale of the same level of competitiveness in transport and logistics which only some of the biggest international companies currently have. Of course, the biggest players are aware of this and they're actively following this technology," Račić says.

Three companies, operating in more than thirty countries and having a massive annual income of over three billion euro, are the first buyers, more specifically, they're the first commercial reference of Gideon's robo-warehouse, which is a major boost not only to this startup in particular but to robotics in Croatia as a whole.

The use of various robotics in Croatia is on the up, and Milan Račić says their product will provide a competitive advantage for Croatian companies and will continue to transform them. Mladen Pejković, senior executive of the Atlantic Group, says that digital transformation is considered an important element for future competitiveness. "That's why we're very excited about the pilot project with Gideon Brothers in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics in our logistics operations," noted Pejković.

"The pace of change will only accelerate in the future, and our partnership with Gideon Brothers will give us tools in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics that will help shape that future," stated Branko Roglić.

Ivan Gadže of the large company Tokić said that in parallel with engaging the best people to help them realise plans to spread to other EU markets, they want to provide their employees with the very best tools to help them achieve this.

"Strategic cooperation with Gideon Brothers is seen as an opportunity to introduce smart automation into our business and we reiterate the success we've achieved in Croatia on the international scene," said Gadže.

Matija Kopić, co-founder and CEO of Gideon Brothers, revealed that along with Milan Račić, his new startup, Gideon Brothers has three other co-founders who have helped significantly in the development of the first Croatian industrial robot. One of those individuals is Josip Cesić, he is one of the authors of the most successful algorithms in the world for simultaneous localisation and mapping, which is based on stereo cameras.

Then comes Edin Kočo, who led in the design and production of robo-warehouse, and had previously designed and manufactured robots for inspection in nuclear power plants. Last but by no means least, the fifth co-founder of Gideon Brothers is Kruno Stražanac, who is a big data expert, extremely knowledgeable in data analysis and technical support.

Kopić stated that he is lucky to live in such an incredible age, because Gideon Brothers has managed to accomplish something that many of the previous theoreticians of robotics could have only dreamed of.

He points out that this success is a result of very strong support from both Croatian and foreign investors. "The support of our investors and clients confirms our conviction that autonomous robots equipped with visual perception will deeply and positively change our society," added Kopić.

In just two years, the Croatian startup Gideon Brothers underwent two rounds of investment. It received 16.3 million kuna or 2.2 million euro in investment from 21 investors.

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

Click here for the original article by Bernard Ivezic for Poslovni Dnevnik

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