Zagreb, 17th January 2022. In its third transaction since establishment, the Prosperus Growth private equity fund invested in IntechOpen, a successful Croatian company and the world’s leading publisher of Open Access books. The investment in the majority stake in the company, co-founded by Aleksandar Lazinica, a serial entrepreneur known to the public as the owner of the Submarine gastro brand, represents one of the most significant domestic investments in knowledge, education, and academic networking.
IntechOpen was founded by Aleksandar Lazinica and Vedran Kordić, two scientists who, while researching in Vienna, encountered difficulties in finding scientific data and motivated by this problem, started a company that solves it. IntechOpen in its database contains relevant scientific papers in the fields of physics, engineering, health, technology, biology, and social sciences. By making scientific topics globally available through e-books, the company is successfully promoting and popularizing science. In August 2021, the influential global company for business analysis and marketing trends, Delta Think, declared Rijeka’s IntechOpen the world’s leading publisher of Open Access books.
‘We are honored to invest in organizations and projects such as IntechOpen. They represent one of few Croatian companies that are a true market and global leader. IntechOpen not only successfully competes among global companies, but also dictates the dynamic of its market. With this transaction, we continued to confirm what we announced at the launch of the fund: the orientation of Prosperus Growth are promising companies that strive towards excellence and have the potential for multiple growths.’, emphasized Joško Miliša, the President of the Management Board at PROSPERUS-INVEST, who manages Prosperus Growth fund.
‘I am convinced that collaboration with Prosperus Growth is to open new opportunities and possibilities. This transaction is a welcome confirmation of IntechOpen thriving business, which will certainly continue to work as a leader at the Open Access books market, with the possibility of expanding into new market niches and areas, in which we have not been present so far. Our work focus will remain on science and technology, and when it comes to e-books publishing, we will continue with our key principle: to bring achievements of modern science to everyone in an innovative and easily accessible way.’, stated Aleksandar Lazinica, the founder of IntechOpen.
‘The IntechOpen strengths in our community with more than 138 thousand scientists, including scientific community key opinion makers, are Nobel Prize winners and scientists that are amongst 1 percent of the most cited in the world. This new investment will allow us to provide an even better service to anyone looking for proven scientific content, while continuing to democratize knowledge, making it available to anyone with internet access.’ said Sara Uhač, CEO of IntechOpen.
Prosperus Growth private equity fund, in which more than 59 million euros were collected from investors, is an innovation on the Croatian financial market, and through the CROGIP program, it was supported by the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) by investing 41.96 percent of the fund total capital. After the first two investments in IT companies, Prosperus Growth is now entering the publishing sector.
Prosperus Invest, fund management company of private equity fund Prosperus Growth, is a member of the Croatian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (CVCA).