Senad Santic was only 4 years old when he and his family fled to Sweden from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 1993, in the midst of war. Years later, Santic realized he wanted to connect his friends and business networks in Gothenburg, Sweden, with those in Mostar — and that’s exactly what he did.

After studying information technology (IT) in Sweden, Santic lived in the United States for a year, where he discovered his passion for business and entrepreneurship. He returned to Gothenburg and, together with some of his professors, started a company to develop a mobile application for local schools.

He contacted his friend Nikola Mirkovic, and they wrote a plan to establish an IT consulting company. Santic returned to Mostar and lead the operations and programming part of the business, and Mirkovic remained in Sweden in order to find clients and business opportunities.

In 2016, Santic finally made the leap and co-founded an IT firm, ZenDev, that brought together his two hometowns separated by more than 1,000 miles.

“We work mainly with the Swedish market, and the network of clients is expanding every day,” said Santic

One advantage to working in Bosnia, Santic said, is the availability of support to help his company expand and maximize the impact of investment.

Today, ZenDev is among the 20 fastest growing companies in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

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