With its new capital, the successful Croatian company Include is expected to expand its product offering in the smart cities area.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 12th of September, 2019, the Republic of Croatia’s largest VC fund, Fil Rouge Capital, has invested a massive four million kuna into the Solin-based startup Include, founded and managed by innovative entrepreneur Ivan Mrvoš.
The young entrepreneur and Incude CEO boasted on Facebook that this was a step closer to the company’s informal goal of as much as thirty million kuna in investment, which is an aim he had set for himself by the end of this year. Previously, Include had raised 15 million kuna through Funderbeam, bringing the total investment in 2019 to the most famous Croatian smart bench manufacturer up to an impressive 19 million kuna.
Ivan Mrvoš, founder and CEO of Include, posted about Include’s latest investment on Facebook, saying it was an important day for his company.
“Fil Rouge Capital – FRC has invested four million kuna, which means that in 2019 we have (so far) secured as much as 19 million kuna through investments and now an incredibly challenging period awaits us in which we plan to open offices in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom…, and to present several new and significantly more advanced technological solutions for smart cities by the end od 2020,” Include’s boss wrote.
Just how much this new investment has increased Include’s market value remains, however, unknown. After the Croatian company’s last campaign via Funderbeam, it exceeded one hundred million kuna. Mrvoš also boasted that one of the four largest auditors in the world estimated that Include, at that time, was worth an incredible 110 million kuna.
With its new capital, Include is thus expected to expand its product offering in the smart cities area. Mrvoš, on the other hand, revealed back in early July this year that he wanted to build his own campus. The idea is that it would be spread over 15,000 square metres and would accommodate not only new product development and manufacturing, but also employee living spaces.
That idea is something similar to what another wildly successful Croatian company called Infobip is already doing in Croatia, but Mrvoš wants the new campus to be like the first Croatian smart city.
Ivan Mrvoš appeared on Forbes’ prestigious list of 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing & Industry for 2019 in Europe back in February. His company is already present in more than 260 cities and on 44 markets worldwide with its innovative products. Otherwise, Include had its very first investment round in 2017, and has come a very long way since.
He then raised 465,000 euros in capital through Funderbeam. Since then, larger private domestic investors also started recognising Include’s huge potential and began investing in the company. Among them is Stjepan Talan, the owner of Solvis, a company known for its solar panel manufacturing, which has invested four million kuna in Include. Mrvoš claims that foreign funds are also beginning to show interest, too.
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