Infobip, a leading IT company in Europe with the headquarters in the Croatian town of Vodnjan, has signed an agreement with One Equity Partners (OEP) on a major strategic investment, the software company said on Thursday.

Infobip has thus raised over $200 million from the private equity firm in a deal which values the Croatian cloud communications firm at over $1 billion and was its first external round of funding, people familiar with the matter were quoted by foreign media as saying on Wednesday.

The Vodnjan-based company said on its website that “this is the first outside capital raised by Infobip’s visionary founders, achieving a unicorn valuation with one of the largest European software Series A rounds in recent years.”

“In OEP, Infobip also gains a highly experienced strategic partner to help build its presence in the North American market and accelerate its growth through strategic acquisitions.”

“We believe that conversational user interfaces are transforming the way we interact with digital services, and this will forever change the way we interact with the world around us. We’re headed towards a new era – which we call ‘interaction 4.0’ – replacing the need to browse the web or download an app with conversational interaction as the heart of communication. We plan on being at the forefront of this era, and this investment from OEP will help to get us there,” Silvio Kutic, CEO of Infobip, was quoted as saying.

Infobip is a software company that enables businesses to build richer and more connected customer experiences across all stages of their customer journey at scale.

Infobip was recently voted best A2P SMS provider for the fourth year running by mobile operators and enterprises in ROCCO’s annual Messaging Vendor Benchmarking Report.

The company generated €602 million in 2019 revenue, having achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 48% for the last decade.