Kyiv information technology company Kodisoft is banking on its latest project to revolutionize one of the riskiest industries out there and put Ukraine on the map as a hotspot for information technology development.
The man at the helm of this ambitious project is Dmytro Kostyk, founder and acting head of the company’s board of directors.
Kostyk founded Kodisoft in 2002, in his hometown of Stakhaniv in Luhansk Oblast. He moved the company to Kyiv in 2004. Soon after, Kodisoft launched its “intellect device for Bluetooth marketing project, a device that allows users to transmit information via Bluetooth connections. It put Kodisoft on the regional map.
Since then, there has been KoLight, a 3D
interactive projection system that allows users to become a part of the action.
Coca-Cola used the technology in a Spanish supermarket campaign. BookPro,
organizational software for booksellers, came next. Then there was BusinessPro,
a complex accounting software used primarily in printing houses, allowing them
to more effectively store, structure, analyze and process business information.
But the company’s most exciting and ambitious
project is its latest.
Interactive restaurant technology is the
restaurant industry’s answer to function and diners’ answer to atmosphere. It
is touch-screen tables, bars, partitions, floors and walls. It is not having to
dash from table to table to take an order, or wait for a waiter to ask what
you’d like, but a simple swipe of the finger. It is deciding which type of
atmosphere you and your dining partners are in the mood for – morphing swirls
of color, a digital fish or blossoming flowers – and getting it on demand. If
you’d like to watch your food being prepared, you can do that, too.
Kostyk began the project four years ago with a
small team of developers and a bold idea about how to change the way
restaurants do business. As the project advanced, the plan broadened to include
not only the industry’s needs, but also how to improve the dining experience.
“When we started we believed we could change
something in the restaurant industry,” Kostyk told the Kyiv Post. “The whole
first year of development we just talked with people and visited a lot of
different restaurants and bars.”
They’d gathered enough information by the end
of year one to know what they wanted to create.
In the development stage, the technology saw
many different incarnations. In the end, three years after they began, the team
developed the hardware and software for interactive restaurant technology
themselves from scratch.
It still needed to be tested by someone other
than Kodisoft staff before the company marketed it to potential buyers. So,
with the help of an investor, the company went into the restaurant business,
investing 460,000 euros (about $590,000) to create Oshi on the
tourist-destination island nation of Cyprus.
After just five months, the Asian-themed
restaurant had returned the company’s entire investment, a feat that can often
take years in America and Europe. Time Out Cyprus named it the 2012 restaurant
of the year.
After eight months, Kostyk was sure enough
with the technology to introduce it elsewhere. A website went live in November.
Kodisoft’s strategy is simple: find local
partners who can provide the business know-how and are excited about
integrating the technology with a restaurant, while his company handles the
applied science side of things.
In that sense, Kostyk found his ideal partner
in Zeinab Mahmoud.
Mahmoud, who lives in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, told the Kyiv Post about her partnership with the tech company in
opening a restaurant in the burgeoning metropolis. Together with Kodisoft,
they’ve invested $800,000 into Ebony, an interactive multi-ethnic eatery that
will serve cuisines of East and North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle
East.
Home to more than two million people of
varying nationalities, Dubai, with state of the art infrastructure and a
reputable business environment, makes for an ideal location to open an
interactive restaurant, Mahmoud said. What’s more, the location is in the
shadow of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure in the world at
829.8 meters.
Ebony will be the first of its kind in the
Middle East and Africa, according to Mahmoud, who plans to open a series of
restaurants in many of the region’s larger cities using Kodisoft’s technology.
“Technology is the future,” Mahmoud said. “The
hospitality industry is lacking behind in technology usage. We believe this
restaurant will be a trend setter in the region.”
Ebony is set to open in late April.
But Kodisoft’s expansion plans don’t stop in
Dubai. Kostyk already has snagged a piece of prime real estate in London’s
Piccadilly Circus, where it is developing another interactive restaurant, and a
location in central Barcelona is being scouted right now.
The company has also been in talks with
Canadian investors to open restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver later this
year. In the U.S. Kodisoft will take a different approach, focusing on
franchising and developing interactive coffee bars called “touch cafes.” The
plan is for 10 cafes round the U.S. by the end of 2013, with three in
California. Exact locations are still being sought out, but they’ll most likely
be centrally located in major cities.
“We would like to introduce the concept all
over and conquer the world, or something like that,” Kostyk said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J.
Miller can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
