Why Poland

An innovative country with an immense capacity for growth

Innovation 

Over the last 5 years, the number of start-ups in Poland doubled.  In 2019, Polish start-ups employed over 47,000 people,

  • Polish start-ups specialise in:
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
    • Machine learning
    • Fintechs
    • IoT
    • 4.0 Industry
    • Big Data

40% of the companies cooperate with international companies, and 21% of them have strategic clients in this segment.

  • A healthy environment for start-ups was made possible thanks to Government support and academic incubators, which employ over 150,000 people and have an annual turnover of PLN 28 billion.
  • The Łukasiewicz Research Network is the third largest research network in Europe. 
  • The Polish R&D sector is developing dynamically, boasting:
    • 5,800 registered research facilities,
    • A 66% increase in research activity since 2014
    • 62,700 people employed externally by research and development centres
    • the doubling of R&D spending between 2012 and 2018
  • There are over 260 Polish companies working on AI solutions 
  • Polish universities have published 12,000 studies on AI

Poland invests in research and development

5,8 k66%62,7 k

Registered research facilities

Increase in number of R&D facilities since
2014
Externally employed by R&D
Source: Łukasiewicz Research Network


Immense potential

  • Leader in the CEE region in terms of growth rate and GPD per capita.
  • Great expertise in programming, thanks to the talented and well-educated employees.        Polish experts  took third place in the global HackerRank developer ranking.
  • Poland attracted the most Venture Capital investments in the CEE region.
  • Microsoft and Google chose Poland, investing one billion and 2 billion USD respectively in building their databases in Warsaw.
  • Warsaw was ranked 6th in the European Cities of the Future ranking for 2020/21.

Leaders among Polish start-ups

Booksy

Brainly
Docplanner
Source: ‘Why Poland’ a PAIH publication

  • Booksy - one of the world's largest platforms for scheduling beauty salon appointments. It has already secured $ 118.8 million in funding. 
  • Brainly - a social learning platform visited by over 340 million users; it raised USD 148.5 million from investors.
  • Docplanner - one of the largest platforms in the world that connects patients with doctors. The start-up has so far obtained $ 140.5 million in funding from investors.