Business climate in Croatia forces some companies to move to other countries.
Although Mate Rimac has recently provoked an avalanche of reactions when he announced that the most famous Croatian startup, Rimac Automobili, could move its headquarters abroad if requested by investors in the second round of investments, research shows that almost all well-known Croatian startups are already based outside of Croatia, reports Poslovni.hr on April 11, 2016.
Farmeron and Bellabeat, as Rimac himself pointed out, are headquartered in the United States. The same is true for CodeAnywhere, Repsly, and Shoutem. Madbarz, according to available data, is based in Hungary. Oradian is headquartered in Gibraltar, while many other startups like Kish, Agrivija and Locodelsa have headquarters in the Great Britain.
Damir Sabol, the most successful Croatian startup entrepreneur and manager who was able to motivate investors from abroad to invest in Iskon, a company based in Croatia, while it was still a startup, said that his PhotoMath, a startup behind the most successful Croatian mobile application with more than 22 million users, is headquartered in the United States. “Iskon was a company focused on the Croatian market with customers from Croatia while PhotoMath is focused on the United States and global market, so the rules of the game are different, because we must play in a global context”, Sabol added.
Goran Čandrlić, the founder of Kisha, said that he has to keep his company in London as their smart umbrellas would not be able to sell all over the world from Croatia. “This is due to bureaucracy in the country, plus there is no opportunity to finance IoT projects, and not one modern service for payments over the Internet, such as Stripe, supports Croatian businesses”, Čandrlić added.
Paradoxically, a company that is trying to make Croatia a member of the European Space Agency (ESA), as it cannot otherwise access the funds, has moved its headquarters from the United States to Croatia late last year. “The need for the American company was waning and as the Western Europe and the United Kingdom have been our focus, and Croatia has meanwhile joined the European Union, we have decided to relocate to Zagreb”, said Frane Miloš, chief operating officer of Amphinicy. He added he still had to keep another company in Luxembourg as well since otherwise they could not have access to ESA funds. “Situations such as this one are an opportunity for the government to bring investments to Croatia”, he said.
