As Novac/Bernard Ivezic writes, in the first 48 hours alone, the Istrian Infobip company from Vodnjan received more than 100 applications for its Startup Tribe Programme. Most of those applications came from here in Croatia, then from the immediate region, from Slovenia through to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia, and then from the rest of the world.
Applications from startups from other European countries such as Great Britain, Sweden and Austria came in, and then they did so from Singapore and even the USA.
Nikola Pavesic, the leader of the Istrian Infobip’s Startup Tribe, hasn’t even tried to hide his enthusiasm for this more than encouraging initial response.
”For now, after the official presentation of the Infobip Startup Tribe Programme, the response is even better than we expected, and we had quite high expectations,” said Pavesic.
He stated that he is especially pleased with the large number of applications from the rest of Croatia. He pointed out that they’ve been contacted by, among others, some already successful startups, as well as those whose time is yet to come, such as Orqa, Robotiq.ai, Parkley, Hubbig, Farseer and Sportening.
”Now we have to analyse them all and see what the best ones are, or what we could offer them, for each of these startups and projects,” stated Pavesic.
To briefly recall, the head of Infobip’s first startup initiative started his career at the United Nations in Tanzania, and moved to Infobip from Tokyo, where for the past five years he has run partnerships with Nikkei, the world’s largest business newspaper and owner of the respected Financial Times (FT).
Infobip’s Startup Tribe enables startups to receive financial support in large amounts. This assistance is offered in the form of loans for the use of Infobip’s innovative products. In addition, the Istrian Infobip will give startups that become part of its ”tribe” access to its know-how, as well as to a rich network of advisors and investors. Among other things, startups entering this programme will have direct entry to pitching Shift conferences.
Pavesic has already confirmed that he will not take a percentage from these startups, but that the goal of the programme is actually to grow together with startups in the Istrian Infobip tribe.
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