Getting online while visiting Croatia can be a challenge. No longer. Meet RoamFree Ninja.
We get a lot of emails in the Total inbox asking us to promote new businesses, apartment and services.
Most of them do not make it to our websites, as we are not a free business promotion service, but occasionally one tickles us and we are happy to give it exposure. Perhaps it is because I have seen the frustrations of tourists looking for quick, reliable Internet, perhaps it is because I am constantly online, perhaps because we are strong supporters of grass roots Croatian initiatives, but I would like you to meet RoamFree Ninja, a young Croatian start-up. Here is how they introduced themselves:
There is a hassle free option of mobile Internet available in Croatia, called RoamFree Ninja.
We offer a prepaid mobile WiFi hotspot rental service with a hefty allowance of 75 GB per week at 3G+ speed with personalized support and free delivery to all of Croatia, starting at €7.95 per day. 10 people can connect simultaneously on this device.
We are sure that lot of people read, and reading your article, just like we did, and we would be more than thrilled if you’d consider adding us to your article, as a help to us, and to future tourists coming to Hvar. This summer we sent ove 50 devices to Hvar, and response was excellent.
We are a young startup and every bit of exposure we get means the world to us :O)
With an intro like that, it was hard not to help, so I contacted them and asked RoamFree Ninja’s Bruno Bardic a few questions by email.
1. How and why did you start the business?
We decided to go into this project motivated by tons of negative experiences found online by tourists complaining about high roaming charges, spotty wifi service in Croatia and overall lack of a simple hassle-free solution to stay connected.
The company (Epifron d.o.o.) is a joint venture of two proven providers of a wide range of computing and communications products and services, Kanban d.o.o. and Procudo d.o.o. Long-term cooperation between the two companies has led to the next logical step, a joint company EPIFRON Ltd., with the aim of developing innovative communication products and services in tourism. The backbone of our production and service portfolio consists of two complementary access to markets and business end-users (eng. Business to Business – B2B, Business to Consumer – B2C).
2. What are your key target markets?
At the moment key market is Croatia. We are servicing tourists coming into Croatia from all over the world.
3. Take us through the process. I want – what happens next?
When customers visit our website, they enter their desired booking dates, select a pickup location and pay via credit card (additional payment methods are coming soon). As soon as the order comes through, we deliver the Ninja device to the user on provided private address, airport, post office, hotel, hostel or arrange a in-person pickup with the user (only in Zagreb at the moment) and the device is waiting for the customer when they arrive.
The package contains mobile router, power adapter, user manual and prepaid envelope for free return of the device. During their booking, the users have an unlimited, private and secure broadband personal hotspot for up to 10 users or devices wherever they go – be it beach, hotel, boat, field trip or something else, and they have personalized support by email or by phone, and at the moment the average support response time is 2:32 minutes :).
After the rental end date the user only has to put the device and power adapter into the enclosed prepaid envelope and leave it in a post office, or ask his reception to do this for him.
4. Intitial reaction from users?
Reactions are better than we expected. Users are thrilled with service, and we got a lot of encouraging emails that blushed our faces.
Here are some Facebook comments from users that rented our service.
i. We had a fab time in Cavtat- and no hassle with wifi which I needed for work. thanks RoamFree Ninja! What a great service. Just picked up the device in the post office, turned it on and hey presto – instant wifi wherever we went. Brilliant.
ii. If you’re going to Croatia or country near that area, RoamFree wifi is a good choice for you, steady signal, speed is wonderful, my family and I like it very much. The service is also very nice and convenient, but there’s one little story I’d like to share, the day we’re going to return the wifi, we want to put it into the mailbox, but somehow the entry of mailbox is too small= =, we can’t put it in, so my friend opened the mailbox by force and put the wifi into the mailbox, thanks god there’s no police around^^. Anyway, I’ll give 4.5/5 stars, great deal~
iii. My wife and I just returned from a two-week visit to Croatia (from Tennessee, USA). We picked up a RoamFree Ninja at the Zagreb airport’s post office, and dropped it off there again 15 days later. The device worked perfectly throughout Zagreb, Dalmatia, Istria and even the Plitvice Lakes. We are real travelers and we could not have done Croatia without our RoamFree Ninja. What a great service!
5. Where are you marketing?
At the moment we are advertising online mainly with some offline, but all of our effort is currently focused on generating better content on our web page, and through other channels so our service can be recognized by more people.
6. Expansion plans?
Our current expansion plan is to offer service in our neighboring countries, and to help solve the internet connectivity problem for Croatian people that travel abroad.
To learn more about the service, visit the RoamFree Ninja website.
