Scaling the future

The Inside the Mind of the CEO interview series explores a wide range of critical decisions faced by chief executives around the world. For more insight, see PwC's CEO Survey. Vodnjan, a speck of a place on the Croatian peninsula of Istria, is the unlikely home to a European unicorn, a startup valued at US$1 billion–plus. The town has about 6,100 people, cobbled streets, a medieval clock tower, and a reputation for great olive oil. Today, it also has a new high-tech campus on its outskirts, home to Infobip, the brainchild of Silvio Kutić, whose family is from Vodnjan. In 2019, more than 4.8 billion people received messages on their smartphone from their taxi drivers, social media sites, banks, delivery companies, and other sources -- messages powered by Infobip technology. Millions of consumers in rural areas without Internet access also used the company's platform to access services and share information. CPaaS is a cloud-based delivery model that allows organizations to add real-time communications capabilities, such as voice, video, and messaging, to business applications without the need to build the technology infrastructure.