Dublin-based Anam, a leading provider of SMS firewalls, has been acquired by Croatian IT and telecommunications business Infobip. The price was not disclosed although the press release refers to a mixture of cash and Infobip equity, whilst The Irish Times described it as “a multimillion euro deal”.
Anam states that more than 80 mobile network operators use their firewalls. The acquisition will strengthen Infobip’s position as a provider of A2P SMS services. It is also likely that Infobip is seeking to bulk up in anticipation of a future IPO, having achieved a billion-dollar valuation following a USD200mn investment by private equity firm One Equity Partners (OEP) in July 2020. Infobip then strengthened its market position by purchasing messaging business OpenMarket in November 2020 from Amdocs for USD300mn in cash. The projected revenues of the combination of Infobip and OpenMarket were reported to exceed USD1bn. A more recent but less obvious acquisition saw Infobip acquire Shift Conference, which is described as ‘Southeast Europe’s largest tech conference’, suggesting Infobip’s management team are hungry to buy any venture that vaguely complements their core communications platform as a service (CPaaS) business model.
Silvio Kutić, founder and CEO of Infobip (pictured) said:
I am very pleased that Anam has decided to join Infobip in this important phase for A2P messaging. This past year saw the effects of the pandemic impact many operators who were reporting heavy messaging traffic on a regular basis across the world, as businesses moved to a digital model almost overnight. A2P has never been more important to this cohort for sustainability. Together with Anam, we will continue to provide even more support to carriers to ensure we secure messages and help them bring more value to their sector and to end users.
