REUTERS and the New York Times published news about the Croatian company Infobip from Vodnjan, the leading IT company in Croatia and the region, which reached a value of more than a billion dollars.

Infobip confirmed for Index that they signed a significant strategic investment agreement with the capital investment company One Equity Partners (OEP) and stated that this is the first external financial investment in the company, amounting to more than $200 million. With this investment, the company reached the unicorn level, which is a term used for small, young companies whose value is estimated at more than one billion dollars.

Infobip states that this is also the largest European software investment in series A funding in the last few years. OEP is an experienced strategic partner that will help Infobip in building a North American market presence, as well as in accelerating its growth through strategic acquisitions.

Kutic: Infobip is strongly expanding, we are excited

"OEP has extensive experience in fostering transformational growth in the companies in which they invest. We are excited to work with this unique team at a time when Infobip is strongly expanding," said Silvio Kutic, Infobip's CEO.

We are convinced that conversational user interfaces are transforming the way we interact with digital services, as well as that they will forever change the way we interact with the world around us. We are moving towards a new era that we call "interaction 4.0.", in which the new standard of communication will be conversational interaction that will replace website surfing or mobile app downloads. Infobip plans to be the leader of this era, and OEP's investment will help us achieve that goal," Kutic said.

Infobip points out that OEP has a long and successful history of establishing partnerships with founders and shareholders of companies of the highest quality, as well as the fastest growing global telecoms and software companies. It is through such partnerships that OEP has successfully applied its experience and expertise by enabling transformational acquisitions and further investments in organic growth, which significantly expands technological capabilities, geographical reach, and market share of companies.

Infobip investor: We are deeply impressed by the Infobip team, which has built a state-of-the-art communication platform

"We at OEP are excited about the partnership with Infobip's co-founders, Silvije Kutic, Robert Kutic, and Izabel Jelenic. We have a shared vision of further stimulating Infobip's growth ahead of the IPO, both globally and in the North American market by implementing a series of identified strategic acquisitions," stated Chip Schorr, Senior Managing Director, OEP.

He says they are deeply impressed with Infobip's team, which has built a state-of-the-art, SaaS-enabled communications platform that allows leading global companies to have rich user interactions while optimizing performance in partner telecom operators.

Citi, Morrison & Foerster, and EY advised Infobip, while Latham & Watkins and KPMG advised OEP.

This year, Infobip was named the best provider of A2P SMS services in the world for the fourth time in a row, according to the annual ROCCO report. The company generated a 602 million euro revenue last year and has recorded an average annual growth of 48 percent over the last ten years. Founded 14 years ago, Infobip has grown into a leading global cloud communications platform (CPaaS), and this year they introduced their software model as a service (SaaS) with the goal of creating a superior business interaction with end users. The company works with and is a partner of a large number of telecom operators, and it has recently been confirmed as a reliable partner of the GSMA for the "Identity Revenue" initiative, thus enabling revenue growth for telecom operators using digital identity technology. 

Who are the investors?

OEP is a medium-sized capital investment company focused on the industrial, health, and technology sector in North America and Europe. The company grows market-leading companies by identifying and implementing transformative business combinations. OEP is a reliable partner with a differentiated investment process, a wide team of seniors, and proven results of generating long-term value to its partners. Since 2001, the company has concluded more than 180 transactions worldwide. OEP, founded in 2001, separated from JP Morgan in 2015. The company has offices in New York, Chicago and Frankfurt.

Infobip, on the other hand, started as a small startup company from Vodnjan in Istria. Today, with more than a decade of experience in the IT industry, Infobip employs more than 2,100 people globally and operates on six continents in 60+ offices. The company provides its own built-in technology, which can reach over seven billion mobile and other devices in more than 190 countries, enabling seamless mobile communication of businesses with their end users – on every channel and device, at any time and in any location in the world.

Their clients are Burger King, Uber, WhatsApp...

The company is directly connected to more than 600 telecom operators around the world, and it cooperates and is in a partnership with leading companies that develop messaging apps, as well as banks, social networks, technology companies, and aggregators. Infobip is known worldwide as the winner of numerous awards for the quality of the services it provides. The company is collaborating with more than 300,000 clients, including the world's largest chat apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, as well as with globally known brands such as Virgin Megastore, Fear, Uber, Zendesk, Burger King and many others.

Reuters' sources claim that this investment will help Infobip expand further in the US through potential acquisitions and compete with rivals, such as the San Francisco-based Twilio.

Although some may not know the name of this company, it is quite certain that you have used their services – if you receive an SMS from a bank, retail chain, or taxi service, it is very likely that it reached you via the Infobip platform.

A new campus in Zagreb will be completed by the end of the year

Infobip states that they plan to complete the construction of a new campus located in Zagreb's Sveta Klara by the end of the year. This will be their second campus, and it will employ 650 people. The first one was opened in 2017 in Vodnjan, and they also have plans of building a campus in Sarajevo.

Infobip services are used by billions of people around the world.

Their main product is a cloud communication platform. Their services are used by almost 70 percent of the world's population, and their goal is for that number to amount to 100%.

Infobip was ranked among the top ten most innovative companies in the world

Infobip has also won a number of awards for its achievements. This year, it was named the best provider of A2P (application-to-service) SMS services in the world, according to 353 telecom operators worldwide and 315 leading global companies in the annual ROCCO report. This is the fourth year in a row in which Infobip won first place based on the ratings of mobile operators, and the second year in a row the company won based on the ratings of the world's leading companies from various industrial sectors.

Infobip was also ranked among the top ten most innovative companies in the world, according to the Top 10 ROCCO Innovators report, a report that examines the perception and ratings of mobile operators on supplier innovation in the roaming, messaging and connectivity market.

The co-founders and owners of the company are Silvio Kutic, Roberto Kutic, and Izabel Jelenic. Last year they won the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award and represented Croatia at the world competition in Monte Carlo in June this year.

Silvio Kutic graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb and got a job at Elektra, but he did not stay there for long. He resigned and started developing apps for message delivery with Jelenic. Infobip was founded in 2006 and was soon joined by Roberto Kutic, who worked as a mechanical engineer in Uljanik. Today, their company, which was started in a garage, has a campus in Vodnjan on 17 thousand square meters that serves as their headquarters. A new campus is being built in Zagreb, and in the upcoming years, they plan to employ about two thousand people.

They plan to go public at the New York Stock Exchange

Last year, Bloomberg wrote that Infobip is seriously considering going public at the New York Stock Exchange, which was confirmed by Silvio Kutic.

It should be noted that Infobip was one of the first companies to send their employees to work from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. They sent a notice to their employees to stay at home on February 26, and as Index finds out, they are still working from home. During the pandemic, they donated four medical devices worth about €80,200 to the hospital in Pula – a respirator for adults, an auxiliary respirator for the Pediatrics Department, a mobile ultrasound, and a monitor for monitoring vital functions in children.