Technology exports have supplied the growth narrative. The next wave is likely to come from buying, combining and productising fragmented service businesses — if Serbia can lift research spending beyond its sub-1 per cent plateau.
Services are the economy, not the appendix
Services generate more than two-thirds of Serbian value added, yet the country’s investment story is still often told through factories. That underplays the sector with the largest pool of jobs, founders and acquisition targets. In the first 11 months of 2025 Serbia exported €13.6bn of services and imported €11.7bn, leaving a surplus. ICT and other business services made the biggest export contribution, with the US, Germany and the UK the principal destinations.
ICT services exports reached €4.55bn for the full year, up 10 per cent, and produced a €3.53bn surplus. Microsoft’s development centre, Schneider Electric’s engineering operations, Continental, Rivian, NCR Voyix, EPAM, HTEC, Vega IT, Nordeus and Ubisoft sit alongside hundreds of smaller developers and outsourcing businesses. Serbia’s advantages are familiar: engineering depth, time-zone proximity to Europe, English-language capability and costs below western centres. Its weakness is equally familiar: too much revenue still depends on billing people by the hour.
The non-digital opportunity is broader. Nelt and Milšped demonstrate regional logistics scale; Telekom Srbija, Yettel and A1 anchor communications; Air Serbia and Belgrade’s hotel market connect tourism and business travel; MediGroup and Acibadem Bel Medic show the institutionalisation of private healthcare. Accounting, engineering, testing, maintenance, laboratory and environmental services are expanding around industry and regulation. These are less glamorous than software but often more defensible because they require licences, assets or dense local networks.
Serbia’s most interesting service businesses are no longer cheap teams. They are platforms that can buy capacity, add proprietary tools and sell regionally.
M&A is the route from talent to scale
The service market is fragmented enough for consolidation and mature enough to finance it. The EBRD’s €60mn package for HTEC explicitly supports acquisition-led expansion. The sale of MediGroup Serbia by Blue Sea Capital to Finland’s Mehiläinen shows that a local healthcare network can attract a strategic Nordic buyer. In both cases the investment thesis is not simply Serbian demand. It is a scalable platform with management, systems and a regional route.
The richest acquisition fields are IT and engineering services, logistics and distribution, private clinics and diagnostics, payments, renewable-energy services, hotels and specialist business services. The model differs by sector. Technology buyers seek developers, client relationships and intellectual property. Healthcare buyers seek locations, doctors and procurement scale. Logistics buyers seek warehouses, routes and customs capability. Energy-service buyers seek permits, engineers and recurring contracts.
Valuation discipline will matter. Founder-led firms can appear highly profitable when owner compensation, client concentration or deferred investment is ignored. In outsourcing, the departure of a few senior engineers can erase the asset being acquired. In health and logistics, capex and regulation can absorb cash. The best consolidators will centralise finance, procurement and technology while preserving the local relationships that produced the earnings.
R&D is Serbia’s missing middle
Serbia spent RSD90.6bn on research and development in 2024, equivalent to 0.94 per cent of GDP. The business sector funded RSD41.7bn, about 46 per cent of the total. There were 30,810 people employed in R&D, including 19,323 researchers, across 487 organisations; almost two-thirds of the organisations were businesses. The institutional base is real, but the spending intensity remains below the level required to turn a large engineering workforce into a broad portfolio of owned products.
There are credible clusters to build around. Continental employs a large engineering workforce in Serbia; Rivian operates a Belgrade technology hub; automotive suppliers develop embedded and power-electronics capabilities. The planned BIO4 campus aims to connect universities, hospitals and companies in biotechnology. Gaming, artificial intelligence, agricultural technology and industrial software draw on strong mathematical and engineering education. The opportunity is to move research closer to commercial demand, not merely increase the number of public programmes.
M&A can accelerate that move. A cash-generative services group can acquire a niche product company; a foreign strategic can place a development mandate in Serbia after buying local talent; a healthcare network can combine clinical data with diagnostics. But research incentives should reward patents, product revenue and collaboration, not relabelled routine engineering. Serbia needs patient growth capital, stronger technology-transfer offices and managers who can sell products internationally.
The next entrants will buy ecosystems, not desks
A newcomer can still build a delivery centre in Belgrade or Novi Sad, but wage inflation and competition for senior staff reduce the old labour-arbitrage case. Acquisition offers faster access to teams, customers and compliance. Secondary cities — Niš, Kragujevac, Čačak, Subotica and others — widen the talent map, while a regional buy-and-build strategy can combine Serbia with Bosnia, North Macedonia and Montenegro.
The likely winners are companies that connect three layers: recurring local demand, exportable expertise and proprietary technology. A logistics group with supply-chain software, a clinic network with diagnostics, or an engineering business with embedded products is harder to copy than a generic service provider. Serbia’s service economy already has the revenue base. Its next corporate cycle will be about who assembles the platforms — and whether R&D turns those platforms into owners of intellectual property rather than permanent subcontractors.
