The Greek startup industry has been growing strong, and companies serving the enterprise have delivered a big part of such growth. An increasing number of Greek enterprise software startups are successfully serving some of the largest companies in the world. With this post, we would like to bring them to the forefront and highlight what makes us excited about them.

Doing business with the world’s largest companies requires a world-class mix of talent, products, and processes that cater to the highest standards. By serving such large customers, employees of such companies continuously improve their technical and operational competence. Their founders are becoming more ambitious, and the industry’s profile as a whole is raised in the minds of investors and acquisitors alike.

In what follows, we put together a list of 23 Greek enterprise software companies that cater to the Fortune Global 2000, along with some of their most prominent customers. The list includes companies that were founded fairly recent, in their vast majority in the last decade, and maintain a significant part of their operations –including R&D– in Greece. It is by no means exhaustive –there are more such startups, and we welcome any additions– yet we believe it is pretty telling:

Let us provide some more color on what you just saw. The marketing engine of the most valuable company in the world. The largest European airline’s hiring machine. The largest US restaurant chain’s employee training platform. America’s largest oil producer contracts and bidding recommendations. The real-time data infrastructure of one of the largest insurers and banks in Europe. All of the above are powered by software made in Greece! And what our mapping highlights is just the tip of the iceberg, since most such customer engagements are not made public…

A few thousand people are working in these companies, improving their game every day by meeting the requirements of some of the most demanding companies in the world. Engineers are joined by professionals across the spectrum, from support to sales to marketing to finance to HR, building technology products and the companies around them, at the same time accumulating hands-on experience that is highly sought after around the world.

To us, these world-class professionals, and their peers in similar companies, in Greece or beyond, are the backbone of our industry – our greatest asset. And, judging from what we see in the market, compared to what used to be the case only a few years ago, we believe they have now reached critical mass – more startups starting to cater to this kind of companies than ever before, and this is just the beginning.