Earlier this month, Ukrainian energy-management startup Ecoisme was selected to participate in the Virgin Media Accelerator program, an initiative of Richard Branson in partnership with US incubator TechStars and Liberty Global Ventures.
Ecoisme is the only startup from the region to be chosen among other applicants from 71 countries, as reported by Ukrainian tech blog AIN.UA.
The program will kick off in May and last for three months. Participants will receive support from such mentors as Sir Richard Branson himself, Tom Mockridge, CEO at Virgin Media, Peter Kelly, another Virgin Media executive, and Bruce Dain, Vice President at Liberty Global Ventures, as well as experts from Facebook, Twitter, Stripe and Twilio.
At the end of the acceleration program, the startups may receive up to $120,000 of investment.
Meanwhile, Ecoisme has raised an undisclosed amount from business angels Nick Bilogorskiy and Sergey Povzner.
“It’s amazing to see how the Ecoisme young bunch of Ukrainian whizkids have created such a buzz in the IoT sector. It’s an area that is normally dominated by tech giants,” said Bas Godska, a Dutch marketing expert who invested in Ecoisme at an earlier stage, in an exchange with Ukrainian Digital News.
“Their skills and initial traction through crowdfunding and angel investments will now get a great push and global support via Techstars and Sir Richard Branson’s team. Delivering their promise of smart energy management in our homes has come a step closer now!” Godska added.
In January, Ecoisme’s co-founder Ivan Pasichnyk got listed in Forbes Europe “30 Under 30” success list.
Created in 2013, Ecoisme initially went through Kiev-based incubator Happy Farm (which then shut down). The startup also completed an acceleration program and received €80,000 in funding investment from Hubraum, a Krakow, Poland-based incubator and its backer Deutsche Telekom.
