You're reading: 25 top IT startups, tech firms, online shops and innovations

Over the last 25 years, Ukraine’s information technology sector has come from nowhere to become the country’s fastest-growing segment and one of its leading hopes for the future.

And even though it’s still not on a par with agriculture and metallurgy, the country’s traditional powerhouses, the excitement over the prospects of this young sector is high.

There’s good reason for that.

Ukraine may already have the largest information technology labor force in Europe – some 100,000 IT specialists – and it now exports billions of dollars worth of software to the world: In 2015 alone, Ukraine earned about $2.5 billion from exports of the country’s software and IT services. Moreover, Ukraine’s tech industry is showing accelerating growth, year after year.

Apart from providing outsourced IT services, Ukrainians have started building outstanding tech products and founded companies that have been snapped up by tech-savvy giants like Google, Apple, and Snapchat. The country’s rapidly expanding e-commerce sector is helping more and more Ukrainians buy online every year.

And while many are trying to attract buyers for their companies abroad, or move their operations abroad themselves, many others are focusing on developing the next big thing here, in Ukraine, and for Ukrainians.

The following are Ukraine’s top 25 most famous, useful and successful tech-related innovations and e-commerce companies.

ProZorro

The ProZorro system is a tech innovation introduced by the state as a way to tackle the widespread corruption in Ukraine’s state procurement. Developed by anti-corruption nongovernmental organization Transparency International, ProZorro, has saved the state about Hr 2.6 billion ($104 million) since the start of its use at the end of 2015. Starting from Aug. 1, its use became mandatory in all state purchases. ProZorro’s developers claim that the system will save taxpayers Hr 55 million ($2.2 million) every day.

Ecoisme designs household sensors to track energy usage by domestic appliances in the home. The data is then sent to users’ smartphones along with energy-saving tips and alerts about devices left turned on.

Ecoisme

Ukrainian startup Ecoisme develops smart-home solutions, with hardware and software that allows more efficient energy consumption and remote control of electrical home appliances. The young company has won prestigious international awards, raised funding on global crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, and won a place in a U.K. based tech-acceleration program run by Richard Branson’s Virgin Media and U.S. Techstars. Ecoisme CEO and co-founder Ivan Pasichnyk was included on the list of 30 of the most successful people in Europe under 30 years old in the industry sector compiled by U.S magazine Forbes.

Looksery

Leading-edge messenger application Snapchat, which now has over 150 million active users, owes a lot of its popularity to its classy lenses feature, which was designed and developed by Ukrainians from Odesa. In 2013, Looksery founder Victor Shaburov and his team started developing an application that could do real time facial modification of photos and videos on mobile platforms. In less than two years, Looksery was bought up by Snapchat, which reportedly paid a record sum for a Ukrainian startup – $150 million.

IT director at Privat Bank Dmitry Dubilet speaks at a press conference in Kyiv on June 16, 2015 while presenting the iGov electronic services portal, which he helped create.

iGov

Pressure to remove the bureaucratic obstacles to delivering government services in Ukraine has come largely from the ground up, from civil activists who know how cutting-edge technologies can chop through red tape. Developed by IT volunteers, iGov is a state administrative services portal that allows citizens to order official documents certified with e-signatures and e-stamps, meaning its users can sidestep the country’s notorious bureaucratic paper chase and endless lines in state offices. In the regions of the country where it is already up and running, the portal provides more than 300 types of paperwork, such as marriage certificates, subsidy documents, criminal record certificates, and so on.

Viewdle

Google image search has become a boon to journalists and the public alike, but few people know this innovation is a product of Ukrainian tech knowhow. Founded in 2006 by two Ukrainians, the startup Viewdle created a mobile-focused visual analysis company creating computer vision and facial recognition technologies for consumer products. While raising more than $12 million in funding from various individual investors and venture capital funds to create this technology, Viewdle caught the eye of tech giant Google. In October 2012, according to Bloomberg, the U.S. company wrote a cheque for $45 million and swallowed up Viewdle. The Ukrainian team moved to the United States, and merged with Google’s Motorola Mobility, which in 2014 was bought by China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. for $3.2 billion.

20 outstanding firms

Terrasoft’s softwear design team employs more than 500 people in the company’s offices in Kyiv, Moscow, Boston and London. Ukraine’s biggest online retailer, Rozetka, and leading employment service HeadHunter are among Terrasoft’s clients.

KM Core
KM Core holding company manages the assets of high-tech companies, and makes money by investing in innovation.

iBlazr
iBlazr Is developing a portable camera flash for iOS, Android devices and Windows phones.

Nova Poshta
Nova Poshta, a private postal delivery and logistics company, has a nationwide network of 2,300 branches in nearly 1,000 cities and towns.

Eleks
Eleks is one of the oldest Ukrainian software developers, employing about 1,000 people globally. Born in same year as independent Ukraine, it has developed steadily, and now has offices in the United Kingdom, Poland and the United States.

Rozetka
Rozetka, Ukraine’s biggest online retailer, currently has a 40 percent share of the country’s online shopping market.

DepositPhotos
DepositPhotos is a New York-based but originally Ukrainian royalty-free microstock photography agency.

Grammarly
Grammarly is a web-based service that allows users to upload a text in English and have it scanned for errors.

Petcube
Petcube is the developer of the Petcube Camera, a device that allows pet owners to monitor and even play with their furry companions remotely.

Readdle
Readdle is a producer of mobile iOS applications focuses on time management apps, and software to make documents, books, images and PDF files easier to read, edit and share.

Prometheus
Prometheus is a nonprofit educational technology company that offers open online courses for Ukrainians given by lecturers from country’s top universities.

Terrasoft
Terrasoft designs its own customer relationship management software.

SolarGaps
SolarGaps has developed a device that combines solar panels with venetian blinds to allow those who live in apartments to generate their own electricity.

Zakaz
Zakaz is a Ukrainian online grocery delivery service.

Highbrow
Highbrow is an email-based learning service that sends bite-sized chunks of educational courses to its users e-mail inbox every morning.

TripMyDream
A website for travelers, users of TripMyDream can select a vacation destination from a range of options that company’s researchers have collected data on.

Clickky
Clickky is a platform for publishers to monetize mobile traffic in emerging markets.

Preply
Preply is a website which provides an online service for finding language tutors.

eFarmer
The eFarmer startup is creating an app for farmers that, together with a satellite antenna, will give precise information about location to develop the most efficient way to work a field.

MarsHopper
A NASA competition prizewinner, the MarsHopper team of Ukrainians has invented a robotic space probe fueled by carbon dioxide that can skip around the surface of the Mars to explore it.

AgroMonitor
AgroMonitor is an internet of things (IoT) project to help monitor and analyze farmers’ fields.

The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by Beetroot, Ciklum and SoftServe. The content is independent of the donors.