ATHENS – Even as the ruling Radical Left SYRIZA is squeezing one of the country’s most successful startups, the taxi-hailing service Taxibeat, foreign investors are looking keenly at Greek entrepreneurs and snapping up their companies.
With young businesspeople and entrepreneurs complaining they are being stifled by the government, some 200 million euros ($235.04 million) was invested in Greece-based start-ups between 2010 and 2016, the business newspaper Naftemporiki said.
That coincided with an ongoing crushing economic and austerity crisis that saw successive governments do little to promote new businesses and as scores of thousands of others shut down, unable to make it after a wave of tax hikes and increased payments for social security and other mandatory government payments.
Most of the investment was funneled into start-ups that focus on technological and IT products, while in most cases the creative and scientific workforces for these companies were also based in the country, the paper said, even while thousands of young and hundreds of companies were moving to other countries.
According to figures released by Marathon Venture Capital, the rate of capital investment in Greek start-ups rose significantly since 2010.
A large portion of this six-year investment was Greek state funds, along with financing by the European Investment Bank (EIB) through four hi-tech-affiliated funds – part of the Jeremie initiative in 2013.
Local investment funds, “business angels” and international investors also participated in several Greek start-up rounds. The purchase of Athens-based BugSense by Splunk at the end of 2013 is viewed as the milestone in terms of Greek start-ups’ presence on the international stage, Naftemporiki said.
From zero buy-outs in 2010, the year 2016 saw six such major purchases of Greek start-ups, while in the first half of 2017 another four were announced.
Recently, the German group friends4media bought-out the very popular Quizdom general knowledge and popular culture app game creator.
The Greek company was created in 2014 and today boasts more than two million users, even launching a television game show last year – in cooperation with Germany’s Eageron – based on its popular app game.
According to Quizdom’s creators, the new Echelon 2D application, which is based on the classic arcade game, will be offered at no cost in future Android and iOS operating systems.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Victorgrigas License: CC-BY-SA
Source: thenationalherald.com
