Portuguese-German Xelerate.tech invests around €40 million in Porto over the next five years and plans to hire 100 software engineers by 2024.
The Portuguese-German business accelerator Xelerate.tech will invest around 40 million euros through its software development team over the next five years in Porto. The company aims to work with foreign tech companies establishing in the region, such as the German Advanced Apllication that, within half a year, will create 35 jobs in the city, says Pedro Rocha, CTO of Xelerate.tech.
Xelerate.tech is thus supporting the installation of the German Advanced Apllications, which "develops software products for various industries" and "aims to create 25 software engineering jobs in the next six months", Pedro Rocha tells ECO / Local Online. "We create software teams that work with our clients who are all foreign companies. We leverage the digital transformation process of these companies", he summarises. In this sense, he plans to hire 100 people in 2024.
Since 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Xelerate.tech has been helping companies to settle in the city of Porto, "to create tech hubs, technological centres", namely turnkey solutions that involve the creation of entities and hiring.
The company has two business models. "We can hire people for our end client, who opens a company. We are the external management team that defines all the processes, from human resources to the necessary support with Portuguese legislation that they do not know", describes the responsible. This is the business model that Xelerate.tech established with the Danish ISS World Services, "leader" in work experience and facilities management, which opened, in September 2022, a technology centre in Porto, "ISS Tech Portugal", dedicated to software development to support the core business it has in Denmark and Poland. "We manage the teams that are ISS employees and have no contract with Xelerate.tech," he explains.
In the second business model, he describes, "Xelerate.tech teams work for the foreign company, through an exclusive partnership". This applies in the case of the partnership with the German AVL Software and Function, a world reference in development, simulation and testing in the automotive industry. This was the third company that the German-Portuguese helped to set up in Porto. "We've been working with them for nine months and they've already employed around 20 people," he says.
"Our first big client was a German logistics company, in 2021, which employed around 60 people", recalls Pedro Rocha, who maintains the company's operational base in the industrial area of Porto. Then followed the Danish ISS World Services.
Now, Pedro Rocha plans to invest seven to eight million euros per year over the next five years, which will make a total of 35 to 40 million euros. Speaking to ECO/Local Online, he believes that, given the difficult global economic context, Xelerate.tech is "one of the few companies that is currently in a counter-cycle, as it needs to hire more engineers". It is on track to create 100 jobs by 2024.
Currently, Pedro Rocha plans to invest seven to eight million euros per year over the next five years, which will make a total of 35 to 40 million euros. Speaking to ECO/Local Online, he believes that, given the difficult global economic context, Xelerate.tech is "one of the few companies that is currently in a counter-cycle, as it needs to hire more engineers". It is on track to create 100 jobs by 2024. "We started with a small team, but our goal is to reach 100 people next year, with a total cost of around €7-8 million a year," says Pedro Rocha. "Now we are making the leap."
When these foreign companies decide to settle in Porto, they weigh the existence of renowned universities and the fact that it is "an international technological centre", with talent in the technological area, he concludes.
