On the anniversary of russian invasion Tech Crunch has published a great article, giving not only overview of the industry, but also a list of Ukrainian tech companies and initiatives you can support, the products you can use and the startups which you — if you’re an investor — can look at funding. We, with a bit of a delay, publish here the introductory part and invite you to check out the full article with a list of tech companies to watch and do business with.
According to the article, Ukraine’s startup ecosystem was thriving before the war and making great progress, with Ukrainian startups raising $832 million in VC funding in 2021. VC Funding was steadily growing before the war and there are more than 50 VC firms continuing to operating in the country.
According to research by the Ukrainian tech industry itself, there are about 228,000 members of the tech industry in Ukraine today, with the main tech hubs being located in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa. During the last year, as many as 57,000 were forced to relocate abroad, while around 7,000 joined the ranks of the Armed Forces or Territorial Defense, and today fight on the front lines against the aggressor.
As a mark of the Ukrainian’s astounding resilience both on and off the battlefield, in the first 10 months of 2022, Ukraine’s export of IT services grew by 9.9% from a year earlier, and brought in more than $6 billion in revenue, more than $542 million the revenue generated in 2021.
TechUkraine and Emerging Europe also published the results of a survey looking at the country’s startup ecosystem. It found that despite the ongoing war, Ukrainian start-ups had demonstrated enormous fortitude. While some Ukrainian startups have relocated, the vast majority have kept at least a part of their operations or team in Ukraine. And more than half continue their operations exclusively from Ukraine.
But over 90% of Ukrainian startups say they need financial support to survive the war. Thankfully, the wider tech industry has rallied around Ukraine in the last year.
Google presented 25 startups with a grant to help them continue operating and growing.
For the first time, as part of the Horizon Europe, the EU will include targeted support for Ukraine out of the €13.5 billion in research and innovation it has to spend this year.
Only last month, OneUkraine sprang up from a host of major European tech founders and investors, who plan to provide sustainable humanitarian relief for the Ukrainian people.
The Ukrainian government also has a range of non-repayable grants and other support for its tech sector, despite also having to fund the war.
And two new unicorns with Ukrainian roots were born in the last year. Ukraine can now lay claim to at least six startups with more then $1 billion valuation: GitLab, Grammarly, Genesis, Bitfury, People.ai and Firefly Aerospace.
That is the first part of the article, followed by an extensive list of Ukrainian startups and tech companies (roughly in A-Z order) that you can check out here.
