IT Forum, a major industry event in Ukraine, held its fourth edition on November 29 in Kyiv (Kiev). The event brought together industry players from all over the country to highlight the key trends of 2015 and present their plans for 2016.
Among the discussed topics were development, design and quality assurance, mobile technologies, outsourcing, freelancers, and Ukraine’s rapidly growing startup ecosystem.
A variety of speakers shared their views on the Ukrainian IT market. Among them were Kateryna Bozhkova, country manager at Upwork Ukraine, Artem Bykovets, founder and coach at Start-IT, Max Itskovych, owner at Mobindustry Corp, Darja Gornitska, General Manager at Astound Commerce UA, Andrey Kolodyuk, founder of AVentures Capital, Vitaly Kozachenko, director at Edsson Software, Kateryna Overchenko, senior QA engineer at Itera Consulting Group, and Oleksandr Trush, founder at Adtena.com.
According to Bozhkova, Bykovets, Overchenko and Itskovych, mobile technology will be one of the key IT trends in Ukraine in 2016.
Bozhkova also said that Ukraine is among the top five countries in the world and number one in Europe for the number of IT freelancers.
Towards a “startup nation?”
In his presentation about the Ukrainian startup market, Kolodyuk stated that:
- $100 million are expected to be invested in Ukrainian IT companies this year, which is three times more than in 2014;
- $240 million have been invested in total into Ukrainian startups over the past five years, which is more than in any Central or Eastern European country;
- The number of Ukrainian startups is expected to grow up to 5,000 from some 2,000 today.
Among the key deals of the year Andrey listed the following:
- Odessa-based Ukrainian startup Looksery was acquired by Snapchat for $150 million;
- Maxymiser, a leading cloud service provider, was bought by Oracle;
- Horizon Capital invested in Rozetka, a leading Ukrainian e-commerce company;
- The Ukrainian Redevelopment Fund, a fund launched by George Soros, invested in Ciklum, a major software engineering company operating globally from its main office in Kyiv (Kiev).
Such Internet associations as IT clusters in Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy, Fintech cluster and some others have been launched this year, in which Kolodyuk sees an important industry trend.
Transforming Ukraine into a startup nation is an attainable goal, believes Kolodyuk. Developing of a project in Ukraine will cost up to ten times less than in the USA, he claims.
The program also included the awards ceremony for the winners of the web development championship UA Web Challenge VIII and mobile development championship Mobile Challenge.
The event was organized by Web Challenge as part of a range of industry events to support the Ukrainian development market.
