Polish start-ups thrive during pandemic

This year has seen a breakthrough for Polish start-up firms and most of them have shrugged off the impact of the pandemic or even benefitted from it, a report has found.

In the Startup Poland foundation's report cited by the Rzeczpospolita newspaper on Friday, only 23 percent of start-up firms say the epidemic has had an adverse effect on their business, but 40 percent believe it has had no effect on their operations and 37 percent even claim that its impact was positive.

This year has seen a breakthrough for the sector in Poland as it saw the birth of the first two 'unicorn' companies, or firms valued at over one billion US dollars, the medical appointment service DocPlanner and the beauty and hair appointment app Booksy.

"And the whole pandemic period has proven to be an accelerator for the sector," Rzeczpospolita wrote. "Between 2020 and the end of the third quarter of 2021, close to PLN 3.9 billion (USD 0.96 billion) was transferred to Polish companies by venture capital funds."

Tomasz Snazyk, Startup Poland CEO, was quoted by the newspaper as saying: "It seems that investors have started to believe that start-ups are a prospective sector whose growth will only accelerate in the coming years."

Another optimistic development is that close to 20 percent of Polish start-ups have acquired at least PLN 5 million (USD 1.23 million) in funding, nearly 60 percent have been growing and generating higher revenues compared to the previous year, and every fifth has generated monthly incomes exceeding PLN 200,000 (USD 49,000), Rzeczpospolita wrote.