Polish VC funds most active in region

Poland and Estonia turn out to be leaders in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of the number of venture capital (VC) investments. Alfabeat, a fund supporting start-ups, and the Dealroom analytical platform added 506 capital rounds carried out in Poland from 2011 to the third quarter of 2019. During this period, Estonian technology companies participated in 297 rounds. However, the value of these transactions is inversely proportional. The indicator for Poland oscillates around €600 million, for Estonia, it reaches €1 billion. In terms of investment value, however, both countries are behind Romania, which owes its success to one company – UIPath. The South African software supplier collected a total of €887 million on the VC market, which is the largest among companies in the region. The total number of investment rounds carried out in Romania is 150.
“I see a change in the approach of investors – they are moving from a strategy focused on a large number of small rounds to qualitative investments in which they support companies with appropriately higher financing,” Bartosz Lipnicki, managing partner at Alfabeat, said.
In his opinion, however, countries from this part of the continent are still far from investment opportunities in Western Europe, not to mention Silicon Valley.
"Value of VC investments per 1,000 software engineers in Central and Eastern Europe is 9-12 times lower than on developed European markets,” Bartosz Lipnicki added.
(Puls Biznesu)