Growth of investment in Ukrainian startups and IT companies
2020 was a breakthrough year for any business, and the IT sphere is no exception. This year has shown what is really important and necessary for business development. The reputation of Ukraine as a modern and promising country for investment has increased many times over. Investments with a high proportion of risk — venture capital investments, during the pandemic and quarantine restrictions have not paused. It would seem that under all sorts of restrictions, Ukrainian business should have slowed down, but startups have raised the figures for investment in Ukraine by hundreds or even thousands of times. Many startups in our country received proper financing during this period. The proof is that investments in the IT-industry grew by 257% in 2021 compared to the previous year. Now the indicators of private and venture capital investment in this area stopped at the figure of 132 million dollars. This information was provided to us by the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA), which works to improve the domestic investment climate and helps investors and startups find each other. Investment breakthrough in the IT sphere The year 2020, more than any other year, has tested a variety of business models, markets and cohesive teams for the ability to adapt to any conditions and find creative solutions to problems. UVCA emphasizes in the press release that IT-business actively attracts foreign investments to Ukraine today. And at the same time, this area is not neglected by domestic investors. Among the largest investment deals in 2020 are:
- Reface — $5.5 million from U.S. investors;
- AllRight — $5 million raised for an English language school;
- Rentberry — $4.5 million to develop an online rental platform;
- Influ2 — $3.4 million for the development of an advertising targeting platform. And even in spite of the crisis, the demand for the product increased by 250%.
- Liki24, a well-known platform for searching and ordering medications online, raised $5 million.
- Discussions about the Ukrainian investment market and the development of the global IT sector do not stop even today. The improvement of investment attractiveness of our country is evidenced by the following fact. This year more than sixty deals were made, almost half of which were investments in Ukraine from international funds.
