Last week a variety of Ukrainian and international innovators, investors, accelerators as well as female entrepreneurs, were awarded as part of 42 Investment Summit 2020.
This two-day international online conference brought together over 500 attendees, including more than 50 startups and over 50 investors and corporate innovators.
The Ukraine Innovation Awards 2020 related to eight categories:
- The Best Corporate-Startup Collaboration 2020 was that of retail price optimization company Competera and Ukrainian omnichannel apparel and footwear retailer Intertop for their use machine learning algorithms in pricing. Competera’s case study with UK-based online retailer WiggleCRC Group was also shortlisted in the same category.
- The Best In-House Innovation 2020 award went to WOG, a Ukrainian chain of gasoline stations and convenience stores, with its “smart oil station in the pocket” mobile application.
- Startup Innovation Cases in Ukraine 2020 featured AXDRAFT, which offers a “simple way to create mistake-free legal documents.” Earlier, the startup was accepted into Y Combinator and raised $1.11 million. The company’s portfolio includes such brands as Slack, Adama, Louis Dreyfus, Glovo, Sandoz, and DTEK.
- The Best Early Stage Startups in Ukraine 2020 was judged to be SEMCS by Mosquito Control, which has developed “a smart eco-friendly mosquito control system to clean outdoor territories from mosquitoes.”
- The most massive investors in Ukrainian-founded startups 2020 (by amount invested) are Goldman Sachs, Iconiq Capital, Y Combinator, and Continuity Fund for their $268 million investment in Gitlab.
- The most active VC investor in Ukraine’s startups 2020 (by number of deals) is Genesis Investments, a Ukrainian VC fund investing in startups from Eastern Europe and the Baltic region.
- The most active accelerator investing in Ukrainian startups 2020 (by number of deals) is Startup Wise Guys, presented as “Europe’s most experienced B2B startup accelerator and one of the most active early-stage investors in the Nordics.”
- Among the Top-20 Women Tech Entrepreneurs in Ukraine 2020 are Anna Polishchuk, the co-founder of meal ordering startup Allset, which recently raised a $8.25 million Series B round led by the EBRD; Ksenia Belkina, the co-founder of US-Ukrainian AI-powered medtech startup Cardiomo; and Viktoriya Tigipko, founding partner at one of Ukraine’s largest institutional venture funds, TA Ventures.
See video: The final ceremony of the Ukraine Innovation Awards 2020
Ukraine Innovation Awards 2020 touts itself as “the first Ukrainian awards for corporate and startup innovation cases, investors, entrepreneurs who provide innovative solutions that can help businesses from Ukraine and around the world to grow through innovation.”
The awards were initiated by Kyiv (Kiev)-based boutique innovation agency Center42 in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
