As Josipa Ban/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, while a fairly decent number of Croatian technology companies are moving their headquarters outside of this country’s borders, we’re also seeing the opposite, which is very important news for all of Croatia. The Indian unicorn Amagi has decided to open its very first research and development centre outside of India right here in Zagreb.
The office has only just opened, and hiring should begin soon, according to the media technology company founded back in 2008, which provides “cloud” content broadcasting services and targeted advertising solutions for broadcasting on TV and streaming platforms.
The Indian unicorn Amagi is, therefore, a global SaaS leader that provides video solutions “in the cloud”. It isn’t yet exactly known how many people will be employed by this company here in Croatia and just how much will be invested. However, the company has stated that they decided on Croatia because they had already cooperated with local experts, so they decided to use that cooperation for further development.
“The high level of productivity of Croatian experts, along with a good balance between private and business life, makes Croatia an excellent location for a successful high-tech company like Amagi. We plan to expand and we will do so both in and outside of Croatia,” said Sanjay Kirimanjeshwar, the vice president of the Indian unicorn Amagi, who is also in charge of marketing.
As for the development centre here in Zagreb, he says that it is difficult to go into details about product development. “But what we can confirm is that their work will be instrumental in accelerating the growth of streaming TV and FAST, especially in technologies that include big data, UHD Graphics, Dolby Vision, JPEG-XS, machine learning and personalisation,” revealed Kirimanjeshwar.
The brand new centre here in Zagreb will be led by Igor Marinic, Marko Horvat and Danijel Peric, and it should enable this successful Indian company to expand more into the European market.
“Thanks to the research and development centre in Croatia, we’ll be closer to our users and will be able to offer them the technological support they need in real time,” said Baskar Subramanian, the CEO and co-founder of the Indian unicorn Amagi, a company that sells its solutions across more than 40 countries of the world, whose client list includes the likes of ABS-CBN, AccuWeather, A+E Networks UK, Cinedigm, Cox Media Group, Crackle Plus, Fremantle and numerous other impressive names.
The arrival of Amagi here in Croatia was actually not publicly known, but preparations had been underway for some time now, according to an inspection of the Court Register, which shows that the company in Zagreb (Amagi Eastern Europe d.o.o.) was founded in April last year.
Besides the fact that the Indian unicorn Amagi certainly has its own calculations when it comes to the opening their first foreign development centre in Zagreb, it’s clear that this is a great thing economically for Croatia and its experts who will now get the opportunity to work on the development of some of the most advanced video and communication technologies. This was also confirmed by a statement from Igor Marinic, the general director of Amagi Eastern Europe.
“Croatia has successfully established itself on the global technological map as a country which creates the best talent, therefore we’re confident that the newly opened Amagi development centre will be one of the key drivers of further growth and success,” he pointed out. The company also received an investment of slightly more than 100 million US dollars just two months ago (in November 2022) from the American investment company General Atlantic.
With the capital raised, the value of the company increased from 1 billion dollars, which was what they were worth back in March 2022, when they received an investment of 95 million dollars, to a whopping 1.4 billion dollars. They achieve 100% annual revenue growth and employ more than 800 people worldwide. Part of the investment will obviously also be invested in the newly opened development centre here in Croatia, but the exact amount is currently unknown.
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