Last Friday a large conference — Tech Emerging Europe Advocates, took place in Warsaw. During the event, the head of Google for Startups, CEE Michal Kramarz said that company doubled the funding within the project, allocating $10 million for Ukrainian startups from Google.
In March 2022, the international giant Google launched a fund in order to support Ukrainian startups. The planned amount of support was announced 5 million dollars. After the TEEA meeting it was increased — to $10 million.
Within Google for Startups framework, it was planned to allocate up to 100,000 dollars grants without participation in companies capitals. Selected startups could also count on corporate mentoring, product support, and Cloud credits from fund.
“Ukrainian startups supported by the fund received $10 million in a wartime funding during 2022 and were able to hire an additional 216 employees. But what is also very important: they were able to increase revenue by 200% year over year, which means that even in a difficult time, during the war, in a situation that requires stability, they were able to achieve incredible results”, — Kramarz said.
“We received 1.7 thousand applications from startups from Ukraine, of which 300 were selected. From this number, we initially planned to select 50, but the startups were so good that we said: lets at least try to support as much as we can”, — CEE added.
Moreover, 60 startups founders from Ukraine and Belarus are hosted at the Startups Campus Google in Warsaw.
Kramarz expressed hope that after the war, the IT ecosystems of Poland, Ukraine, and Britain will work even more closely than they do now.
To sum up Kramarz added: “We have amazing skills. We have wonderful people. Let’s try to work more rationally”.
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