Last week the best Ukrainian startups and industry figures were distinguished in the new edition of the Ukrainian Startup Rating, an initiative of the GrowthUP accelerator to highlight the country’s most promising tech projects.
The jury was composed of 30 experts, investors, entrepreneurs, and press representatives. No fewer than 81 startup and 45 personalities were nominated. GrowthUP founder Denis Dovgopoliy was excluded in order to avoid any conflict of interest.
According to the rating, the top startups in 2014 were:
- PetCube, whose gadget allows pet owners to remotely chat and play with their animal through a mobile app;
- Ecois.me, which has developed a system for managing energy at home;
- Coppertino, a Ukrainain startup with its headquarters in Los Angeles, which has developed a minimalist and free music player;
- Competera, a startup that operates in Ukraine, Russia and Lituania and offers a SaaS solution to monitor prices;
- Kwambio, a developer of 3D printing devices with headquarters in New York;
- Wishround, a developer of “social payment” solutions to receive and offer gifts.
PetCube and Coppertino were already distinguished in last year’s edition of the ranking.
Companies of more than three years of existence, or more than $ 1 million in yearly sales, or with no connection with Ukraine, were not eligible. These criteria excluded such interesting projects as Augmented Pixels, Attendify, Concepter, Crowdin, CrystalBank, fahlo.me, itrestaurant.net, Multitest, Pics.io, Videogorillas.com, and the “Chasopys” creative space, the organizers note.
In addition, “experts seem to pay significant attention to infrastructure projects, which are not taken into account in our Rating, but nonetheless exist and influence the market in general,” said GrowthUP founder Denis Dovgopoliy.
Five VCs were judged to have had the biggest influence on the development of the country’s tech and venture scene last year:
- Yevgen Sysoyev of AVentures Capital;
- Andrey Kolodyuk of AVentures Capital;
- Ilia Kenigshtein of Hybrid Capital;
- Alexander Olshanskiy of Internet Invest Group;
- Nataliia Berezovska of Detonate Ventures.
Most of these figures were already distinguished in several other recent rankings.
