Recenty AIN.UA, the leading Ukrainian tech blog, offered its annual ranking of the country’s most successful startups. Based on a survey among local business angels, venture investors, entrepreneurs, lawyers and the organizers of acceleration programs, the ranking features projects which were created or pivoted over the past three years.
Although they were created by Ukrainian teams, some of these companies have established their headquarters in another country, as is often the case with startups from the region.
This Ukrainian-American startup, which was also featured in the previous ranking, offers an AI-based predictive tool for sales managers. The company raised $7 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in May 2017.
In 2016, People.ai secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Garage Technology Ventures, as well as from a bevy of US and Ukrainian business angels.
Touted as “the Hubble Telescope pointed at decision-makers,” this startup offers person-based marketing for b2b. Influ2 uses “machine learning to detect rare decision-makers in billions of pageviews of internet traffic.”
Launched just this past summer, Influ2 already participated in the 2017 edition of TechCrunch Disrupt and managed to attract $190,000 of angel investment.
Currently, Influ2’s team is split between Ukraine and the US, and consists of nine people.
Presented as “an algorithm which digitizes the lived time of every registered user,” this startup is referred to as a “sensational” project of the past summer by AIN.UA.
Nimses, which “is comparable to a person’s patent over time itself,” transforms each minute of every registered user’s life into an indestructible digital unit, a Nim, which remains on the Internet forever. Every Nim owner has the right to use their Nims at their own discretion.
The application, which was initially created by a team of students from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, is available worldwide.
Besides the fact that Nimses was registered in Delaware, USA in 2016, nothing is known about the location of its office, or the sources of financing of the startup.
Presented as the first global marketplace for in-game content, the startup raised the equivalent of more than $19 million through two phases of its public token sale in 2017. The first phase of the ICO took place this past August, with more than $11 million raised at that time.
Monobank is a mobile-only bank launched this past summer by three former top managers of PrivatBank: Dmitry Dubilet, Mikhail Rogalsky and Oleg Gorohovsky. The trio left this major Ukrainian bank after it was nationalized in late 2016.
Reportedly, some 17,000 users tested the service, with 150 million hryvnias (roughly $5.2 million) loaned through it during its testing period.
Over 400,000 transactions have been carried out by the holders of 15,000 Monobank cards since the launch of the project.
- Allset
In October last year, Allset, a mobile app helping restaurants cut dining time in half by allowing customers to pre-order their meals, attracted $5 million. Greycroft Partners led the round in which also took part Vaizra Investments as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Compound, FJ Labs, and Ukraine’s SMRK VC.
In 2016, the startup secured a total of $3.35 million in pre-seed and seed funding.
The startup was founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs Stas Matviyenko and Anna Polishchuk in April 2015 as a continuation of their previous project Settle, also known as Advice Wallet.
The startup operates in nine US cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago, and partners with over 700 restaurants in the country.
Presented as an “unstore alternative to Apple’s Mac App Store,” Settapp aims to save your time and money when working with the ocean of more than 30,000 Mac applications.
Launched in early 2017 by MacPaw, a Kyiv (Kiev)-based Mac software development company with international traction, the startup claims to have attracted over 14,000 paid customers, expanded the number of offered apps to 100, partnered with 80 vendors and hit a $1,5 million annual recurring revenue.
Touted as “the world’s first voice mask for smartphones,” Hushme made it to the ranking thanks to two successful crowdfunding campaigns.
This “personal acoustic device that protects speech privacy in open space environments” managed to raise nearly $200,000 — $71,880 on Kickstarter and $102,351 on Indiegogo — in 2017.
Cardiomo is a US-Ukrainian AI-powered medtech health monitoring startup. Founded in 2016 by a Ukrainian couple, Ksenia and Roman Belkin, the startup has managed to attract $400,000 in grants, including $23,000 at the Vernadsky Challenge this past spring.
Powered by the team of engineers, cardiologists, designers and managers, currently, Cardiomo claims to have received 1,000 pre-orders.
PassivDom is a Ukrainian-founded startup offering “sustainable self-learning modular houses using 3D-printing technology.”
The startup is one of the 10 Ukrainian companies showcased at the January 2018 CES trade show in Las Vegas.
Besides, PassivDom’s founders, Max and Julia Gerbut, were featured in the “New Europe 100: Eastern Europe’s emerging technology stars” listing published by Financial Times in November 2017.
Presented as “the best way to multistream video live across all streaming platform,” this Texas-based startup with a “tech heart” in Vinnitsya, Central Ukraine, claims to have 15 million broadcasts delivered through its service since its inception. The startup allows streaming to YouTube, Twitch, Periscope and Mixer, in addition to more than 30 other streaming services, simultaneously.
Hideez is a hardware startup launched by Ukrainian serial entrepreneur Oleg Naumenko.
The first device designed by Hideez is SafeBand, a “smart” bracelet allowing users to monitor objects remotely. In 2016, it received more $40,000 on Indiegogo in just one month, which is 15% above the target. The bracelet helps tracking lost, misplaced or stolen objects.
Its second endeavor is “a single digital key,” the Hideez Key, which lets you access your devices with no need to enter your password every time. It is equipped with a smart lock, password vault, touch guard, OTP generator (which “generates one-time passwords for two-factor authentification and online banking”), theft alarm and other features.
In early 2017, Hideez was selected to participate in Mach37, a prominent cyber security accelerator in the US.
Founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Bogdan Suchyk, Mobalytics touts itself as “the first personal performance analytics and improvement tools for competitive gamers.”
In September 2016, the startup was the first Ukrainian startup to win the Startup Battlefield of TechCrunch Disrupt. Mobalytics walked away with $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.
Two months after its victory in San Francisco, the startup raised a seed round of $2.6 million from Almaz Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and GGV Capital.
