IFC and Innova Capital: Turning Local Businesses into European Champions

As Poland’s largest provider of digital solutions for SMEs, WeNet serves more than 70,000 clients, offering a mix of "do-it-yourself" and "do-it-for-me" services tailored to each business. Its customers range from clothing companies and design studios to gardening wholesalers and online footwear retailers. 

Yet, despite their resilience and adaptability, Poland’s SMEs still lag their EU peers in digital adoption, according to WeNet CEO Joanna Plona. Only 4 percent of Polish firms use AI, just 19 percent use cloud services, and only about 40 percent of SMEs have reached even basic levels of digital intensity.

WeNet’s mission is to close these gaps by delivering affordable, high-quality solutions that enable SMEs to compete with larger players.  

“The main challenges SMEs face are funding, skills shortages, and access to technology,” says Plona. “What they really need—and what the data and market trends confirm—is a one-stop shop: an all-in-one solution. This is where we believe we can make a real difference. 

“We help SMEs by selecting the best solutions for them, tailored to their needs, so they can focus on running their businesses. Our mission is to democratize access to technology.” 

WeNet’s growth has been fueled by both financial and strategic backing from Innova Capital, a leading private equity firm headquartered in Poland and a longstanding IFC partner. Plona says Innova’s involvement, which started in 2022, has been transformative. 

“Innova has an active board of directors, including independent supervisory members with deep expertise in technology, AI, and change management. That’s been a game-changer for us,” she explains. “They’ve also helped us attract top-tier talent, leveraging their strong market reputation.” 

Thanks to Innova’s support, WeNet has strengthened its position in digital marketing, customer relationship management, and business operations tools. The company has acquired local leaders such as Semergy Group and Webwave, and became a majority stakeholder in Firmao. Between 2022 and 2024, WeNet’s EBITDA—its profits before loans, taxes, or asset costs are taken into account—grew 2.6 times.

Another key contribution has been helping WeNet sharpen its growth priorities. 

“We focused on two areas in particular,” says Plona. “First, AI implementation—a major project over the last three years. Second, product development, which is essential to staying competitive. Innova helped us make these top priorities, bringing in the right people and consultants to execute them,” says Plona.

Why private equity matters

IFC’s partnership with Innova Capital is a prime example of how targeted investments can unlock the potential of mid-sized businesses—the backbone of the Central and Eastern Eureopean economy. 

Many businesses in the region struggle to access traditional bank loans, leaving them without the resources to scale. Private equity offers a vital alternative, providing not just capital but also expertise, and strategic guidance to help businesses expand, create jobs, and increase productivity. 

In 2020, IFC made a €40 million anchor investment in Innova Capital’s seventh fund, Innova/7, to address the critical gaps in private equity funding. This followed an earlier investment in Innova/6, cementing a partnership built on a shared commitment to fostering growth and resilience.

As Krzysztof Kulig, Senior Partner at Innova Capital, explains: “Poland has made remarkable progress in growing its economy and implementing market reforms, but its capital markets remain underdeveloped.

“Local pension funds are constrained by legislative barriers, leaving a significant funding gap. IFC and other development finance institutions play a fundamental role in filling this gap, enabling funds like Innova to invest in promising businesses.”

Innova focuses its investments on high-growth sectors like business services, industrials, and consumer goods, typically with a technology lens, ensuring its portfolio companies are well-positioned to compete on a global scale. 

Its strategy, says Kulig, “involves upgrading management, driving growth through acquisitions, and helping companies expand beyond domestic and regional markets. We aim to create businesses that are not just Polish or regional leaders, but European champions.” 

IFC’s expertise has been instrumental, going beyond financial investment to also providing hands-on advisory services, particularly in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. “Their support on ESG has strengthened our investment strategy, ensuring we align with best practices and global sustainability goals,” says Kulig.

“We’ve supported Innova with capital and policy advice for over seven years, most recently in the aftermath of COVID and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which made fundraising difficult for funds in the region,” says Farid Fezoua, IFC’s Global Director for Disruptive Technologies, Services, and Funds.

“Innova’s investments align with our strategy of expanding access to financing for fast-growing small and mid-market companies, especially in underserved markets such as Poland and Romania. We are delighted to see investee companies expand their businesses through digitalization and innovation, hire more workers, and improve productivity.”

Ary Naïm, the World Bank Group’s Country Manager for Poland, agrees: “Supporting the private equity sector is core to our strategy in Poland, as private equity plays a key role in helping fast-growing local businesses build competitiveness and create better jobs, ensuring long term sustainability, and bridging financing gaps that traditional banking does not address. Poland still has ample room to develop its capital markets instruments to keep accelerating investment and innovation.”  

CloudFerro: Leading Europe’s Green and Digital Transformation

When the European Union launched its ambitious Destination Earth initiative last year to model and monitor the planet, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)—one of the entities entrusted with the project—turned to another Innova portfolio company, CloudFerro, to deliver a key component: the Destination Earth Data Lake.

This massive “digital ocean” stores and processes petabytes (1,000 terabytes) of satellite data, forming the foundation of the system.

“It’s about turning data into action,” says Dr Maciej Krzyżanowski, CEO of CloudFerro S.A.  “The Data Lake underpins Destination Earth by uniting innovative cloud technologies and a highly scalable architecture. By unlocking the potential of big Earth data, it enables better predictions, faster responses, and smarter climate policies that accelerate a green transformation and sustainable future.”

The largest company in Poland’s space sector, CloudFerro specializes in delivering innovative, tailored cloud solutions like these for data-intensive sectors like space, climate research, and science. With clients including the European Space Agency and EUMETSTAT, the company has established itself as a leader in the European sovereign cloud services market. 

Its evolution from fast-moving tech scale-up to a mature European cloud leader has been fueled by its partnership with Innova Capital—and IFC’s support.

“Thanks to this strategic support, we’re entering a new chapter,” says Krzyżanowski. “We’re not just growing in size but also in ambition, structure, and innovation—laying the foundations for long-term success in a digital world and advancing Europe’s technology sovereignty, which is critical to its safety and resilience.”

As with all its portfolio companies, Innova’s involvement extends beyond financial investment. Krzyżanowski says the partnership is built on a shared vision for growth and innovation, with Innova providing strategic guidance to help CloudFerro scale its operations, expand its infrastructure—and deepen its expertise in cutting-edge technologies like AI.

“We’re living through a revolution in how we use data—and AI is at the heart of it. At CloudFerro, we see AI not as a buzzword, but as a powerful tool that helps our users make sense of massive Earth Observation, geospatial and other datasets,” says Krzyżanowski. 

“From training foundation models to building chatbots that help users explore large-scale datasets, we’re making data more human-friendly, powering data-driven analysis and decisions. The future is about AI-ready platforms, edge computing, and open-source innovation—and we’re proud to be leading that change.”

With IFC’s partnership and Innova Capital’s strategic guidance, companies like WeNet and Cloud Ferro are not only transforming Poland’s economic landscape—they’re setting the stage for innovative local businesses to become European champions and accelerate the continent’s digital and green transitions.