In a video interview with Kyiv Post, Dmytro Kuzmenko, CEO of the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association UVCA), shared his views on the future of technology development in Ukraine and foreign investment in this field.
Before the war, said Kuzmenko, UVCA “was a regular VC association,” but since the beginning of Russia’s aggression, “we focused on preserving the Ukrainian ecosystem.” Going further, UVCA “switched to another huge plan: [defining] what are we going to do after the victory, how we can help, remaster the entire ecosystem in a better way”.
But foreign partners need to understand what Ukraine really is. “Nobody knew what was Ukraine,” often associating the country with Chernobyl and other negative perceptions. “International investors were surprised when we told them that the country was the motherland of several unicorns,” recalls Kuzmenko, who believes that “now things have changed, and everybody know what Ukraine.”
In no way, however, can Ukraine be compared as a market with the USA, Western Europe, South-East Asia or Arabic countries: the Ukrainian market, with a totally different size, can be “considered as a sandbox.”
Kuzmenko believes that “Ukraine can turn into a new global R&D [hotspot] for any innovative solutions in deep tech, military tech, health tech… We’re hungry for this!”
“We have a unique opportunity to create today to test tomorow, and to sell the day after tomorrow.”
When asked why investors come right now, Kuzmenko answered: “It’s the best time to get in, because we’re almost on the bottom — in the good way!” He believes that, “after the victory, there will be a huge recovery boom in real estate, military solutions, engineering,” etc.
“But we need changes in the legal framework, and to show that the new Ukraine is not like the old Ukraine in terms of transparency, [and that] we are reliable partners.”
Watch the interview through this link.
