In 2016, start-ups in the region raised €177 million – not much compared to Europe and Israel’s €4.5 billion of VC investment last year – but significantly up on 2012’s CEE VC investment of €15 million.

A catalyst forbCEE VC investment is its large proportion of maths and science graduates.

Poland, Estonia and Romania are the most active areas. Romanian software company UiPath raised $30 million last month.

Poland is strong in fintech spawning Cinkciarz, Azimo and Currency One which have currency exchange programmes.

In May, Prezi of Hungary which has raised $72.8 million, bought Infogram of Latvia.

According to,Dealroom.co, the Czech Republic has some mature VC-backed companies citing security software specialist Avast and retailers Internet Mall and NetRetail.