Russia in 2023 retained 29th place in the annual ranking of ecosystems for startups Global Startup Ecosystem Index

In 2023, Russia retained 29th place (and Moscow lost one position, taking 30th place) in the annual Global Startup Ecosystem Index, an ecosystem rating for startups, which is prepared by the StartupBlink agency. Top 5 countries were the USA, Great Britain, Israel, Canada and Sweden. In the ranking of cities in the top five, four US cities are San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Among the best cities (in third place) is also London.

The study covers 100 countries and 1,000 cities and has been conducted since 2017. The ranking is based on a general index consisting of three groups of indicators: quantitative (number of startups, co-working spaces, accelerators, etc.), qualitative (including the volume of private investment, the number and size of “unicorn companies”) and the state of the business environment (speed and the cost of the Internet, investment in R&D, and other characteristics).

The Russian Federation in 2022 took 29th place, then immediately losing 12 positions compared to 2021, the reason was the problems caused by military operations in Ukraine. Now the agency’s report emphasizes that the position of the Russian Federation has remained stable, which may be due both to the revival of the domestic startup industry after last year’s shock, and to the fact that the outflow of entrepreneurs and technical specialists from the Russian Federation has not yet managed to affect the ratings.

Over the past three years, the number of Russian ecosystems in the agency’s index has been declining: from 16 in 2021 to 6 in 2023 (we are talking about 6 cities included in the rating — Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Kaliningrad and Tomsk). In 2022, 33 transactions were made with Russian startups compared to 136 in 2021, funding amounted to $288.8 million, having decreased by almost three times (in 2021 – $858.8 million). The report says that the Russian Federation has long tried to overcome the perception of the country as a closed startup ecosystem and open up to international markets, but in the face of a difficult geopolitical situation, ecosystems have become even more isolated.

It should be noted that in 2022, startup funding decreased worldwide – according to Crunchbase, by 30%, to a level of $413 billion. The indicator for the first quarter of 2023 is $76 billion (minus 53% compared to the first quarter of 2022).

Venera Petrova