Burra was created to answer a practical question: can the regional IT services sector be consolidated without losing the entrepreneurial energy of the companies that built it? Although the first step was made in Croatia, the ambition was never limited to the domestic market. Sven Marušić, CEO of Burra, says the goal is to create a broader platform for Southeast Europe, with Western Europe and the United States as its primary markets.
“The idea was not to build only the Croatian market, but to consolidate the regional IT services industry,” Marušić tells ICTbusiness Media – ICTbusiness.info & ICTbusiness TV. Croatia was a natural starting point because the first partner companies entering the Burra concept were either Croatian or had an operational connection to Croatia. That made the initial integration easier, but it does not define the platform’s final reach.
Burra was launched with the backing of Provectus Capital Partners, and its first companies are Devōt, Tacta and CoreLine. Marušić says each brings a different profile. Tacta has operations linked to Belgium, Zagreb, and Bosnia and Herzegovina and has a strong focus on the financial sector, with most of its revenue coming from Belgium. He describes CoreLine as a software engineering company that embraced AI early and strongly as a core tool in its work. Devōt is a Zagreb-based software engineering company with revenue from the United States, primarily from the healthcare sector.
In the first phase, Burra is not pursuing aggressive integration. The companies continue to do what they were doing before joining the platform, while Burra helps where it can and stays out of the way where interference could harm existing operations. Marušić stresses that integration processes are sensitive and should not be forced administratively. The logic is that scale, sales synergies and new projects will gradually bring people, processes and capabilities closer together.
The long-term goal, however, is not a loose group of separate firms. Marušić says Burra wants to go deeper than a model in which companies are merely gathered under a common ownership umbrella. “Our goal is that in five years there is one Burra on the market,” he says. That does not mean identities and competencies will disappear overnight, but that the companies should gradually become components of one consolidated organisation.
The reason is market scale. Individual IT services companies are often too small to be seriously considered by large international clients. As part of a larger platform, they can share references, certificates, expertise and sales channels. They can compete for projects that would be too large for any of them individually and become more competitive abroad. Marušić believes new projects will naturally accelerate integration.
Burra does not act as a venture capital platform. It is not looking for startups that still need to prove their business model, nor product companies whose growth depends on external funding and the hope that one product will conquer the world. The focus is on existing profitable companies, mainly service providers, with proven business models, organic growth, and the potential to grow faster within a larger system. “We are looking for companies with a proven business model that would grow by themselves,” Marušić explains.
A distinctive feature of the model is ownership. The founders and owners of the companies joining the platform become shareholders in Burra. They are not leaving entrepreneurship; they are continuing it within a new framework. “For all the founders who joined, this is a continuation of their entrepreneurial journey,” Marušić says. They have not become employees of a corporation, but participants in a larger platform where a significant part of their wealth is tied to the success of the shared project.
That is why cultural fit is one of the most important criteria. Burra brings together strong individuals who have already built valuable companies and are used to making decisions. The challenge is to create an environment in which they remain motivated, feel they can continue building, and see the larger organisation amplify rather than suppress their entrepreneurial drive. Marušić admits that this is not easy, but sees it as the essential condition for Burra’s next phase of growth.
