What has happened in the Ukrainian tech market in August 2021?
Available at: TechUkraine
R&D, new offices in Ukraine
The USA streaming software giant Roku will open an R&D office in Kyiv. Now the company opened 2 positions Site Director and Senior Technical Recruiter – read
Ukrainian tech giant SoftServe opens an office in Dubai to provide turnkey solutions in the Middle East region. New hub will develop innovations in AI, machine learning, cloud services, and online banking – read
Ukrainian ELEKS is launching its newest office in Zurich, Switzerland, continuing its global expansion and strengthening its presence within central Europe. Through the creation of this new Swiss hub, the company will boost its partnerships with new and existing Swiss clients – read
Ukrainian Lviv-based tech giant SoftServe bought by 377,5 mln UAH a high-tech ‘campus’ on an extensive 13-hectare site of a former prison in a southern part of Lviv city – read
For the last half-year international tech giants continue to open the R&Ds in Ukraine: BlaBlaCar, Glovo, Globality, Lyft, CognitOps. Even now Ukraine is home to more than 110 R&D centers for global tech giants including Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Apple, Skype, IBM, The Boeing Company, Ericsson, Siemens, Oracle, Magento, Wargaming.net League, and Ubisoft just to name a few – read
Venture capital and startups:
Estonian ride-hailing company Bolt, with R&D center in Ukraine, has raised $713 million of investment from Sequoia, Tekne, Ghisallo, and existing G Squared, D1 Capital, and Naya with valuation $4.75 billion – read
A Boston-based DataRobot, with offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa and Khmelnytskyi, raised $300 MLN investments at value of $6,3 BLN. DataRobots works with global brands, like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India, Airbnb, United Airlines, Panasonic, and others – read
People.ai joins the unicorn club after announcing the $100 million in Series D funding at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation. This series was co-led by Mike Dinsdale, CFA Dinsdale of Akkadian Ventures and Abdulla AlBanna of Mubadala Capital, with participation from existing investors including ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. – read, read
Danish customer service solution that evolved into a customer engagement platform Dixa, with an R&D office in Ukraine, announced a Series C funding round totalling around €89 million. Dixa has offices in Copenhagen, London, New York, Berlin, Kyiv, Tel Aviv and Melbourne – read
The USA knowledge management startup Shelf.io, with development center and product team in Lviv, raised a $52.5 million Series B led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners – read
Ciklum, a global product engineering and digital services company, today announced its acquisition of CN Group, a Czech-based software development firm from Genesis Capital , one of the leading CEE private equity funds – read
German online car part retailer Autodoc is preparing a Frankfurt stock market flotation in the autumn that could value it at about 5 billion euros ($5.93 billion).Autodoc operates in Ukraine since 2017, has 3 offices (Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa) and over 1000 employees – read
GIOS, a Ukrainian platform for blended learning of mathematics, has raised $400,00 from UVO Ventures, including smart investments. The smart investment means that the startup will receive 85 percent of the funds in cash and the rest — in the services of programmers, lawyers, and other professionals – read
The Ukrainian project VRpartments, which develops a VR solution for real estate, has received a $310,000 grant from the Poland-based incubator Unicorn Hub – read
Ukrainian startup developing an online law services platform Legal Nodes, founded by Margarita Sivakova, Nestor Dubnevych, and Max Maliuk has announced closing a $300K pre-seed round by an angel syndicate of angel investors LIFT99co, Hype Ventures fund, and others – read
Ukrainian educational startup skillsetter.io raised $262 000 from Embria. The startup develops educational programs in simulation format for IT companies – read
AI startup Livee, which automates the sales of interior landscaping and measures its impact on employee productivity, has raised a $250,000 round of investment from the startup studio Greenpact Future Labs. – read
Ukrainian startup Awesomic, founded by Roman Sevast and Stacy Pavlyshyna, was selected for the summer acceleration program Y Combinator and raised $125K of investments. Awesomic develops an algorithm that connects companies with proven designers – read
Ukrainian EdTech startup AllRight bought online English language school EnglishDom. The amount of the deal is undisclosed.In 2020, Allright raised $5M from Genesis Investments and other VCs – read
Ukrainian cryptocurrency startup Weld.money announced closing an investment round from Concorde Capital, Magnus Capital, and 7 O’Clock Capital. The amount of the round is undisclosed – read
Ukrainian venture capital fund Genesis Investment has become a lead investor in the latest funding round initiated by Estonian education technology startup 99math that has drawn a total of $1 million – read
Ukrainian messenger for partners and family members Obimy has raised investments. The total amount is not disclosed, but the valuation reached $2 million – read
Ukrainian Startup Fund announced the winners of the 28-29th Pitch Dayі. The 15 pre-seed stage startups that got investments ($25,000 to each): Agrotop UA, Clasee, MySat UA, Sugarrr, LuLL world (KOLYHVA), Deputy.ua, Zeely, Smart ION, SolidERP, Insolar-T, the Great Catalog, Real Talk Sport, Elai, MAGBULB, IDvizer – read – read
Ecosystem news:
Ukraine has already become the world’s first country that legalized digital passports: starting on Aug. 23, all Ukrainian institutions are obliged to accept personal IDs shown through the Diia app – read
The list of the Ukrainian tech products that already conquering the world: Ajax Systems Petcube, UGEARS Mechanical Models, Grammarly, BetterMe: Health & Fitness, People.ai, Jooble, MacPaw, SHERP, and others – read
DOU presented the ranking of the largest tech companies in Ukraine (summer 2021) – the top five leaders have remained unchanged: EPAM, SoftServe, GlobalLogic, Luxoft, and Ciklum – read
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary Liga presented The history of Ukrainian IT industry since 1991 – read
The Independent 30 project reveals the formation and development of the modern Ukrainian nation through the stories of famous Ukrainians. Tech industry is represented by well-known Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Petcube, and Dima Shvets, Reface – read
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the proclamation of Ukraine’s Independence, cool overview of the most significant achievements, people, places of Ukraine and, of course, Ukrainian technologies – read
The British aerospace company Spacebit, founded by Ukrainian Pavlo Tanasyuk in 2014, in cooperation with American partners, will carry out the first Ukrainian mission to the Moon in 2022, within the framework of which equipment for scientific research will be delivered to the satellite surface – read
Ukrainian-made engines powered a European Vega rocket into space, allowing the launch of five satellites into orbits. Designed and manufactured in Dnipro by the SE “PA Yuzhmash”, the engines were transported to Kourou, French Guyana for launching the Italian-made rocket – read
The Ukrainian developer and manufacturer of smart security systems Ajax Systems surpassed the mark of a million users globally. In July, the company opened its first service centre in Kyiv. Previously, Ajax’s CEO announced expansion in the USA, Canada, Latin America, and India – read
Ukrainian e-bikes company Delfast has set an electric speed record at Bonneville Speed Week 2021, the USA. This feat was achieved with an electric version of a DNEPR motorcycle – Delfast Dnepr Electric – read
Ukrainian CleanMyMac X has received the Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design 2021. Back in 2017 Gemini 2, another MacPaw application, also got the Red Dot Award and our award-winning family of products keeps growing – read
Ukrainian Vera Platonova, Senior Vice President SEE CIS Visa, was selected as the finalist at THE FUTURE OF Emerging Europe AWARDS 2021 in the category Female Business Leader of the Year – read
Vogue Business, Financial Times, WWD, Forbes, Dazed and Confused Magazine wrote about the mission-driven digital fashion company DRESSX founded by Ukrainians Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova – read
During 10 years in Switzerland, Ukrainian Prof. Dr. Maksym Kovalenko develops KovalenkoLab based on the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich – read
Ex-CEO of Bolt Ukraine Taras Potichnyi joined the Kyiv-based e-commerce platform for medicine delivery Liki24.com as the Vice-President of Expansion. The company has recently opened a new market in Bucharest, Romania. Last year the company kicked off in Poland and now operates in 3 cities: Warsaw, Krakiv, Gdansk – read
Ukrainian tech media ITC.UA became a part of the Creators Media Group founded by MC.today‘s owners Vera Chernysh and Timur Vorona. Now the Creators Media Group consists of 3 portals: MC.today, Highload, ITC.UA – read
Ukrainian retail chain Fozzy Group (Silpo, Le Silpo, Fora, FOZZY Cash&Carry) is developing the neobank “Bank Own Account” (Банк Власний Рахунок) – read and the marketplace MauDau – read
The CEO of the Taibah Valley investment campaign Abdulrahman Alolayan and one of the leaders of the national investment program “Saudi Vision 2030”, visited Ukraine. Saudi Arabians interested in Ukrainian startups, looking for profitable and innovative areas for investment – read
Salto Advisory connects Ukrainian startups with advisors who have built and scaled successful tech companies such as Ragnar Sass, founder of unicorn Pipedrive, LIFT99co, and investor in 40+ startups, Markus Villig cofounder of Bolt, Kristel Kruustük founder of Testlio and others – read
Global co-founder of IT-product businesses Genesis, together with Facebook, launches StartUp Academy — an international academy for founders of technology startups and their teams from Central and Eastern Europe – read
Interview with Dominique Piotet, CEO of UNIT. City, about the U Tomorrow Summit that will be hold on September 3-4 in Kyiv – read
Interview with CEO and cofounder of Apostera Andrey Golubinskiy, by Michael Buryk for Made in Ukraine Tech Startup Edition – listen
Ragnar Sass, founder of Pipedrive (unicorn), LIFT99co & Salto, and investor in 40+ startups, has put together 24 questions he considers when investing in startups – read
Government news
The law of the “Diia City” regime that will create a special legal framework for the IT industry, was signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on August 11. IT companies receive a special taxation model, flexible employment conditions and a special procedure to interact with regulators – read
During President Zelensky’s working visit to Washington, were signed agreements on strategic defense partnership, cooperation in the energy, scientific, space, information protection and border security spheres – read
Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov and his Deputy for IT Development Oleksandr Bornyakov met with Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at Google Karan Bhatia.The conversation revolved around the possibility of optimizing cooperation on the Diia (Action) app and the selection and recommendations of content for the main page of Ukrainian YouTube Music and YouTube – read
The Government has passed an order that will triple the mandatory list of services in centers of administrative service provision (CASPs). As a result, citizens will be able to receive the necessary services in a single office – read
The Unified State Electronic System for the Construction Sector (USESCS), on the Diia portal, can provide 11 services. These include obtaining a construction permit, a declaration of readiness for the operation of CC1 facilities and the issuance of a construction passport – read
Due to arrangements with Germany, EUR 150 million have to be directed to support small and medium-sized businesses according to the program to reduce the cost of loans for SMEs “Affordable Loans at 5-7-9% – read
Reports:
M&A Radar H1 2021 by KPMG – read
M&A-market of Ukraine 1Q 2021 by Capital Times – read
The top trends in tech by McKinsey – read
Tech Cities of the Future 2021 by fDi x TNW – read
Private Fund Strategies Report Q2 2021 by Pitchbook – read
Lazard T100 Index – read
The Future According To SoftBank – read
Introducing Snapchat Trends by Forbes – read
Via TechUkraine, TechCrunch, CNBC, EU-Startups, KyivPost, AIN, Lift99, dev.ua, KPMG, Forbes, AIN, DOU, dev.ua, McToday, Vector
