Portuguese business incubators helped their startups raise 373 million euros in investment in 2020, figures from the National Incubator Network show, according to local media reports on Thursday.
Business incubators helped raise triple the 137 million registered in 2019, according to data from the “Monitoring of Portuguese Incubators” and there were 430 incubated startups, an increase of 15.4% compared to 2019.
Since the network was created in 2016, there has been a decrease in the number of incubation rooms, as well as a lower volume of startups in physical incubation. Startups in virtual incubation grew close to 40%, with the ecosystem adapting to changes brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
“Most incubators quickly adapted to a new reality of support and focused on raising funding and internationalising their startups,” João Borga, the coordinator of the National Incubator Network, told local financial newspaper Eco.
“We all recognize that these are the companies that will innovate and grow faster, but also those that run more risks and that without the support offered by national incubators their survival rates would be very different from what we are reporting now,” he added.
