June the 26th, 2024 – The popular Croatian Entrio platform is conquering new markets and spreading its wings. A recent cash injection of nine million euros has seen it catapulted forward.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Josipa Ban writes, the Croatian Entrio platform for the sale and purchase of tickets recently got a spring in its step in the form of a large investment. This cash injection should enable the company to consolidate its position as the strongest platform on the Southeastern European market in terms of the number of events and tickets sold. That investment came from venture capital fund Invera Equity Partners (Invera EP) in the amount of nine million euros.
After a careful look deeper into the Croatian Entrio platform, which boasts business numbers that have been continuously growing for the last three years, the managers of the fund best known for investing in the Museum of Illusions, concluded that Entrio is a company worth investing in and that it should bring them a good return.
The assessment shouldn’t come as much of a shock to anyone who has followed Entrio’s ambitious business path. In 13 years of operation, the domestic “ticketing” company has continuously invested in technological innovations that make it very attractive to organisers.
Investments in the Croatian Entrio platform’s development so far have amounted to around three million euros. Owing to that, they were able to expand to two new markets. In addition to the Croatian market, they entered that of Slovenia back in 2018, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2023. With this new cash injection, they have announced their planned expansion into new markets and further development.
“Given the amount of investment we received and a strong partner, we’ll certainly make significant progress in the coming years,” said Berislav Marszalek, founder and CEO of Entrio. He announced that they’re planning to start a much more aggressive penetration into the segment of large concerts. The Croatian Entrio platform was more focused on medium-sized events, festivals and conferences, while their competitor Eventim, owned by CTS Events from Austria, led the way when it came to large concerts.
the croatian entrio platform’s fourth investment
This is actually the fourth investment for Entrio. Until this last one, around 660,000 euros were invested in the company, through three rounds (in 2011, 2018 and then finally in 2021). The result of that investment has been quality service, support and products, according to Marszalek.
“That has always been, and will remain, our top priority. Today, our product is much more complex and detailed in most segments compared to that of our competition,” stated the founder and CEO of the company that developed the first self-service platform in the region. This means that organisers can control and monitor sales in real time and thus manage numerous parameters in a much better way,” explained Marszalek.
expansion, expansion, expansion…
With this latest generous investment of nine million euros, their plan is to expand to new markets across the rest of Southeast Europe. Despite that having been revealed, they don’t want to go into any details yet. On top of that, the Croatian Entrio platform will be further improved. Marszalek said that with the latest investment, he will work on solving the biggest challenge in the industry at the moment – that of the active and personalised promotion of events.
With this, Entrio will make a stronger step into the segment of active sales. Currently, Entrio, quite like most platforms for selling and buying tickets, was more focused on the realisation of sales. Promotion was the responsibility of the organiser, who also had the greatest responsibility for the success of the event. With its solution, Entrio should give organisers a new and powerful tool that will significantly help them in the area of event promotion.
600,000 users, and over a million tickets sold in 2023
In addition to all of the aforementioned, the Croatian Entrio platform should receive new functionalities that will enable organisers to maximise their sales and achieve better profits. “Entrio has 600,000 users on its platform, and last year alone we sold more than a million tickets. This is valuable data that we intend to use so that the organisers can make better decisions”, stated the founder of the company.
This new cash sum will also see Marszalek no longer the majority owner of Entrio. The majority owner will become Invera EP.
“Entrio shares a common denominator with the rest of our portfolio as a strong B2C brand with exceptional potential for scaling, which is one of our areas of expertise. Our experience in scaling such concepts has already brought excellent results on existing investments. We expect the same outcome with Entrio,” said Denis Sabolović, investment manager at the Invera EP fund, for which this is the fourth investment.
Marszalek added that their partnership negotiations took a year. “They won us over with their energy, knowledge, experience and the results they achieved. Now we have serious capital that will enable us to make strong moves on several fronts,” he said.
Entrio otherwise achieved a massive 1.65 million euros in revenue last year, representing growth of 55 percent. This year, according to Marszalek, they plan to grow by 50 to 60 percent, and increase their number of employees from the current 30 to 50 by the end of next year.
