The acquisitions of Viva Wallet by JP Morgan Chase, Pollfish by Protégé and the expected Accusonus by Meta / Facebook in the first 35 days of 2022 show that the Greek start-up ecosystem, which was essentially born during the 10-year debt crisis , entered the radars of international investment giants for good, creating a community of Greek startups of international scope.

In fact, according to Endeavor estimates, 2022 will be a milestone year for Greek technology, as we will simultaneously have a record in all the basic ecosystem sizes created by Greek startups: in the number of acquisitions and the size of the agreements, in the amount of funds that will be raised through investments and lending, to new jobs and the number of companies that will be established or will start operating in Greece.

Vote of confidence

It should be noted that 2021 was also a record year, with the vote of confidence in the Greek innovation ecosystem given by domestic and international investors being reflected in the record funding to startups of Greek founders. Investments in start-ups with Greek DNA broke all previous records last year, amounting to $ 4.5 billion from just $ 1.3 billion in both 2020 and 2018-2019, and were ten times higher than 2015, when they had risen to just $ 400 million, but also 87 times more than in 2010.

Indicative of the dynamics acquired by the fledgling entrepreneurship of Greek founders is the evolution of the index of acquisitions and public registrations, which almost doubled last year. “A growing number of leading venture capital & private equity funds internationally participated in investments at all stages, while business giants also made significant investments and acquisitions,” said a Marathon Venture Capital study.

The funding

According to the same data, in 2021 the startups of Greek founders who have no presence in Greece raised the lion’s share of funding. Specifically, they reached $ 3.5 billion, increased by 296%, representing 78% of the total amount invested.

Funding for startups of Greek founders with a presence in Greece amounted to 972 million dollars, increasing by 124% compared to 2020 and 289% compared to 2019. Last year’s investment activity was driven mainly by foreign funds , which led to 150 investments, ie 86% of the total.

Investments

2021 also proved to be the most productive year to date in terms of acquisitions and public registrations in stock exchanges of Greek founders, as 24 acquisitions and 3 public subscriptions were recorded.

It should be noted that in 2021 only domestic start-ups attracted investments of half a billion euros, more than three times compared to 2020 and ten times more than in 2017. The source of funding was 13 Greek investment schemes, 29 European, 24 American and from 20 investment funds from the rest of the world.

Tripling

It should be noted that the value of the domestic startup ecosystem alone from 5-6 billion euros today is estimated to triple, exceeding 15 billion euros within the next five years.

Indicative of the dynamics that Greek start-ups are gradually acquiring is that in Greece today there are at least five startups (or are on the verge) of the category of “unicorns”, ie companies with a capitalization – valuation of over 1 billion dollars.

These are the companies Skroutz, Persado, PeopleCert, Blueground, Viva Wallet, with the last three, purely Greek, “born” in 2021 and officially included among European “unicorns”. In the next period, it is estimated that at least five other companies of this size will be added, with Greece aspiring to be 5% -10% of the European production of “unicorns”, which today reach 125.

The wager

Creating “unicorns” is a gamble for any young ecosystem, as it shows a country’s ability to create large-scale innovative companies. “Unicorn startups” can function not only as a model of business success, but also to contribute to the further development of the ecosystem and the new generation of entrepreneurs, “entrepreneurial angels” and new innovative start-ups.

Areas of activity and objectives

The top three sectors in which start-ups are active remain life sciences, retail, and agritech, with the startups of maritime tech and deep tech continuing to be on the rise, a trend which is expected to continue in 2022.

The ambitious goal, according to market executives, is for Greek startups to contribute 10% of the national GDP at some point, while further development of the domestic ecosystem is expected to fuel the sectors of big data analytics, smart algorithms and artificial intelligence in the near future.

Another field that “generates” startups in Greece is that of technology in the field of health (healthtech), while in Greece in the near future startups are expected to appear in the field of clean energy (cleantech). In general, it is also estimated that fintech, B2B services, healthtech, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence solutions will remain in 2022 the most attractive areas for venture capital investments (VCs).

The top acquisitions

Of the recent acquisitions of Greek startups, that of 48.5% of Viva Wallet for about $ 1 billion by the giant of JP Morgan Chase was considered a vote of confidence for the Greek economy as a whole, while Meta (Facebbok) is expected to announce 100% acquisition of Accusonus with a valuation in the area of ​​100 million euros.

At the same time, the acquisition of Pollfish by the American Prodege made an impression, an idea that traveled from Patras to New York and became a leading market research platform worldwide.

Note that the top 10 acquisitions of previous years, based on data from the Foundation and EIT Digital, were those of Instashop, an online marketplace for supermarkets, pharmacies, pet shops and other businesses, acquired by German Delivery Hero, Softomotive, a software company that provides Robotic Process Automation technology for digital workforce development, acquired by the American Mobileum, and Niometrics, a network analytics company that provides solutions for CSPs, which was also acquired by Mobileum.

Following are the acquisitions of Lenses.io, which offers an innovative DataOps portal for streaming applications and data, acquired by Celonis based in Germany and the USA, THINK SILICON acquired by US Applied Materials and HELIC acquired by the American Ansys.

The top ten is completed by the acquisition of BEAT (TAXIBEAT) by the Daimler group, Itics acquired by the Korean giant Samsung, Moosend, an email marketing service acquired by the American Sitecore, and Avocarrot acquired by the mobile ad tech company Glispa.

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