Belgrade IT sector

The IT sector of Belgrade is the concentration of information technology centers and service providers in the Serbian Capital of Belgrade. With 6,924 companies in the IT sector (2013 data), Belgrade is one of the most important information technology centers in Southeast Europe, with strong growth.[1]

Many global companies have decided to outsource their IT requirements into Serbia as a result of the highly educated populace yet significantly lower wages (compared to western Europe or the U.S.A.).

Microsoft, Huawei, and Kaspersky opened development center located in Belgrade. Microsoft was at the time of its establishment fifth such center in the world.[2] Many other global IT companies choose Belgrade for their regional or European center such as Asus,[3] Intel,[4] Dell,[5] Huawei, NCR[6] etc. What brought companies like Microsoft in the first place was a large pool of talented engineers and mathematicians in a lower wage country and these major investments had in 2015 generated over €678.3 million in Serbia's exports.[7]

Nordeus, a local video game startup, is one of Europe's fastest-growing gaming companies.[8] In just five years of operation, Nordeus has grown to over 150 employees and €64 million of yearly sales.[9]

Another local startup, FishingBooker, was founded in 2013 and now employs over 90 people. Like Nordeus, FishingBooker is a bootstrapped startup.[10] FishingBooker has been described as "the world’s largest online travel company that enables you to find and book fishing trips." [11]

In just the first quarter of 2016, more than US$65 million has been raised by Serbian startups including US$45 million for Seven Bridges (a Bioinformatics firm) and US$14 million for Vast (a data analysis firm).[12][13] Also in 2016, a Belgrade-based website AskGamblers which is generating over €810,000 in revenue and €620,000 in profits was sold to Catena Media for €15 million, all 30 employees will continue to work as normal.[14]

The startup community is helped by a non-profit organization called Startit which is an active community that acts as an incubator for new companies. Startit raised US$108,000 from its Kickstarter campaign in 2015, allowing it to expand its Belgrade center, build a second center in Inđija (completed in February 2016), and expand further to other cities with strong IT industry - Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Vršac, Subotica, Šabac.[15] Other exciting developments include an Agriculture Drone startup that uses drones for land surveying, TeleSkin an app which can identify and track skin cancer and there was another successful Kickstarter for Hexiwear a customizable smartwatch for developers.[16] Progress in Serbian IT over the last six years has been tremendous with the fast growth only increasing as Serbia's many talented engineers, scientists and mathematicians break into this new industry where gross salaries average €2,000 per month (far more than the €400 national average).[7]

The IT sector in Serbia is well on its way to becoming the largest sector of the Serbian economy.[17]