“The Rise of FinTech – New York’s Opportunity for Tech Leadership,” a report by Accenture and the Partnership Fund for New York City, has recently revealed that global investment in fintech endeavors tripled to nearly $3 billion in 2013 from approximately $1 billion in 2008. According to The Economist, in 2014 fintech firms attracted $12 billion in investment, while Goldman Sachs estimates revenues in the sector to have been worth $4.7 trillion.
Health technologies also have seen an astounding growth rate, with roughly $2.8 billion invested in healthcare technologies through the second quarter of 2015, according to a study from Startup Health.
Tech companies in these fields often look for development partners with the required expertise. Many Ukrainian development firms with the necessary competencies thus enter into partnerships with fintech and healthtech companies of all sizes.
Currency Cloud’s cross-border payment solution
Our client Currency Cloud, a leading UK-based fintech company delivering cross-border payments as a service, had strict requirements regarding their provider’s industry and technology expertise. Having raised $36 million in funding, the company is gaining market share in international payments, a space of which 85% is controlled by banks.
Focusing on Europe, the company has been very attractive to startups because it is small, able to add new features quickly and adapt to new platforms – all things that banks are notoriously bad at. Currency Cloud is approaching half a billion dollars of payments a month, and a part of its recent funding will be used to expand to the US market.
N-iX has helped the company build an extension to the current service, “Currency Cloud Direct.” This client-facing responsive web application with RichUI is powered by KnockoutJS. Developed by the engineering team dedicated to Currency Cloud, the application runs with the company’s payment engine, allowing web access to the main Currency Cloud services. Furthermore, Currency Cloud, an API-based service, has involved their dedicated team at N-iX in the development of their core technology. As a result, Payment Engine II, a new, enhanced version of CC RESTful API successfully launched in May 2015 at Finovate Spring. The team continues to work on improving its existing services and helping the company to expand into the US.
While Сurrency Cloud was looking to extend its strong in-house development team with a partner from Eastern Europe, US biotech startup Cure Forward, which was used to working with multiple US vendors, was looking for a single development partner in order to develop its technology more efficiently.
Cure Foreward’s new approach to cancer treatment
Based in Boston, Cure Forward aims to change the traditional approach to cancer treatment by connecting cancer patients with clinical trials. With $15 million secured in a recent round of funding, the company is currently building a web service that will connect patients willing to try experimental treatments for their cancer with researchers who may be looking for subjects with their genetic pathology.
Cure Forward thus “puts personalized medicine within reach” by enabling cancer patients to make their own genomic data available to trial recruiters across the country. As a result, trials can be filled and new treatments can reach the market more quickly.
Cure Forward had previously worked with multiple US vendors to develop its core technology, but their goal was to find a single partner who could deliver expertise in the bioinformatics and cancer genomics fields and cover both front-end and back-end development for a variety of web-services. N-iX matched the criteria. We set up a fairly large, Lviv-based engineering team covering all the required development fields and tailored to meet the goals of the startup.
Cure Forward opened its web service to beta testers in September 2015, with plans for a broad launch in late 2015. The eBay-style forum, where patients can host the genomic data on their cancer and researchers leading clinical trials can browse the postings looking for a match, is being fully developed by a team at N-iX in cooperation with and under the guidance of the company’s CTO in the US.
Having worked with software vendors and tech companies for over a decade now, we know it takes a strategic decision to engage a partner to develop the technology that lies at the core of your business. Service companies usually undergo a very thorough evaluation and have to meet certain strict requirements. However, when the cooperation works out, there is a two-dimensional bright side to it. Service companies get the chance to be a part of the technological disruptions of the new millennium and the partnership is a great place to be in business.
- This opinion is part of the Ukraine High Tech Report, an international study on the Ukrainian IT outsourcing and software R&D industry. To download your free copy of this report, please click here.
