Ukrainian startup Poptop.fm, which provides a marketplace for hiring musicians and photographers, has obtained $30,000 from Torben Majgaard, the Danish businessman who founded Ciklum, a leading Ukrainian nearshore software development firm. Further details of the deal were not disclosed.
“I like Poptop’s area of business as well as the team’s attitude,” Majgaard said in an exchange with Ukraine Digital News. “The fact that they have moved their focus to the UK market, in which I have strong connections, has put me in a good position to contribute.”
Poptop intends to use the newly-obtained funding to promote their service in the United Kingdom. “We have set before ourselves the task of not only achieving rapid growth in a new market, but also changing the approach towards booking professionals within the entertainment industry in the region,” tech blog AIN.UA quoted project co-founder Evgeniy Shestopal as saying.
The team behind Poptop.fm currently resides in and is developing their service in Newcastle, to which they relocated in November, thanks to funding obtained through a grant from the British government. The startup was invited to participate in the Sirius program, which attracts entrepreneurs from around the world with the goal of encouraging them to begin operations in the United Kingdom and launching products in the British market.
The project received 12,000 British pounds for each member of the founding team, free office space in Newcastle, and a spot in the program at the Ignite 100 accelerator, notes AIN.
The startup is a former resident company of EastLabs, a Kyiv (Kiev)-based incubator from which it received an initial $20,000 capital injection in 2013.
Majgaard has invested in more than 15 startups. Five of them are from Ukraine, including VOX (Cuppertino), in which the Danish businessman invested in April of last year. Some of these portfolio startups have established links with Ciklum, which aims to build an internationally-oriented startup environment.
