Moreover, production in Slovakia helps to cope with another problem. Because of the martial law, Raybird cannot export their products, and the final price is limited in markup to 25%. Besides, including development costs in price is impossible.

The factory in Slovakia allows the company to avoid these restrictions. It gives more opportunities in the global market so that countries of the European Union and NATO can buy their UAVs.

The Slovakian factory can build 25 reconnaissance systems per year. Their output will be increased 4 times after closing the round. Skyeton is currently raising $15 million in investments for this expansion.

Apart from the drone factory, Stepura duplicated another of his businesses in Slovakia – the production of modular houses Homers.

What is known about Raybird made by Skyeton

Skyeton has been producing ultralight planes and UAVs for over 17 years. Among the developments of Skyeton, there is the unmanned aircraft system Raybird-3 for long-term intelligence missions of civil and special forces.

• The price of the one system is $1,2 million. It includes three planes, portable ground control stations, an antenna system, a launcher, video and photo cameras, and radars.
• The most expensive camera on the plane costs €300,000. Aside from expensive details, 60-70% of the prime price goes on the development and engineers’ salaries.
• The drone can fly up to 28 hours and cover up to 2,500 kilometers at a height of up to 4,500 meters which makes the drone almost invisible for electronic warfare.
• Only 5 global companies have similar ratios of weight and durability of stay in the air drones yet foreign samples are much more expensive.
• The Defence Forces of Ukraine had ordered over 75 intelligence systems in the period from February of 2022 to May of 2024.

• The first branch office was opened in Barcelona at the address C/Gran de Sant Andreu, 413, Sant Andreu, 08030. According to the CEO of Nova Post in Spain, Oleksandr Pavlovsky, two more branches are planned to be opened later: one more in Barcelona and another one in Madrid.

And over the course of the year, we will actively develop the network of parcel delivery service points together with our partners. We plan to open five or six delivery points in each city along the coast: from Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, to Murcia, Malaga, and Estepona, as well as in Madrid,

Oleksandr Pavlovsky said.

• The delivery time from Ukraine is from 8 days. You can send parcels, documents, cargo up to 1000 kilograms. The post office will work every day.
  • Documents up to 1 kg — UAH 1,000;
  • Parcels up to 2 kg — UAH 1,050;
  • Parcels up to 10 kg — UAH 1,700;
  • Parcels up to 30 kg — UAH 3,000;
  • Cargo from 30 to 1,000 kg — UAH 120 per kg.

Since May, a courier delivery to any address will also become available. An additional payment of UAH 100 will be required for shipments of up to 30 kg, or UAH +120 for every 100 kg.

AIN reminds our readers that Nova Post has opened 89 branch offices in Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Hungary, and Moldova.

• Founded in 2020 by Václav Hodek, Localazy provides easy l10n (localization) and i18n (internationalization) solutions for NGOs, foundations, businesses of all sizes, and global communities, including machine translation, multilingual marketing tools, and quality assurance services. Currently, the company operates in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and some European countries.
• Among its clients are such companies as ROUVY and Scaleway. Some non-profit and social enterprise platforms like Plastic Bank, Donar Online, or CARE also use the Localazy platform. In 2023, the startup received €1 million funding from JIC Ventures, Garage Angels, and 12Bullets, reaching the value of €4.5 million.

• The platform combines AI, experienced translators, and experts from local markets, and is accessible through both subscription and pay-as-you-go models. Its main goal is to help clients reach their target markets through local languages. The company wants to support the fight against language discrimination and ensure equal access to information for all people in the world.

Our mission is to minimize, or even eliminate, language barriers for a billion people around the world. We currently estimate that our platform has already positively impacted the lives of 500 million individuals. Localazy effortlessly translates a variety of content, including websites, mobile games, applications, and information in over 50 formats. We aim to make our solution comprehensive and reach as many people worldwide as possible,

Václav Hodek commented.

The startup also added that expansion to the Polish market allows to support local businesses in their goal to reach their target markets through local languages, as, according to Localazy, only €380 million people speak English natively in the world, and 75% of consumers prefer shopping on websites available in their native language.

• Beast is a sustainable mobility startup founded in Tallinn in 2020 by Anna-Maria Mikaberidze and Micha Mazaheri. The company provides a renting of electric Tesla cars on a per-minute billing model as well as the option to rent a vehicle on a subscription basis or order it for a specific time with delivery to a designated location.

• The company also claims it equally focuses on users interested in long-term use of the vehicle, proposing simplified rental procedures – without the need for filling out paperwork or meetings, with the car ready for pickup at a designated location, opened using a mobile app, and without additional charges for international travel.
• Since the launch, Beast states that its customers have traveled nearly four million kilometers, which has allowed for a reduction of CO2 emissions by an impressive 464 tons compared to driving traditional combustion vehicles.

The creation of Beast was preceded by extensive market research and consumer needs analysis. Our goal is to provide a premium rental service which is accessible 24/7 thanks to a fully automated and fun mobile app that’s helping customers access a more comfortable and environmentally conscious travel experience. This way, our customers traveling for tourism or business can ensure a car waiting for them on-site with just a few clicks in our app,

Anna-Maria Mikaberidze, CEO of Beast Rent, commented.

• According to Crunchbase, the startup managed to secure close to €5 million of total investment through two seed deals: €1.5 million in 2021 and €3.3 million in 2023.

Currently, Beast is already present in 7 European countries, and plans to expand its operations into European markets. Additionaly, the company is set to offer a new, even more convenient and eco-friendly way of using shared vehicles.

• Roman told DOU journalists that in the USA the team will focus on attracting leaders and the local community through the organization of events, because they see great potential in strengthening ties with local startups and investors.
• For example, on February 21, the company held an event attended by 120 YC W24 founders. It was aimed at investing in the development of the startup network in San Francisco. This is a key benefit of working in this city, according to the Awesomic team.
• There are no plans for job openings yet. The location was created for meetings with clients and investors, as well as for corporate events. As for the office in Kyiv, it continues to operate as usual: 25 specialists are currently working from there.

Awesomic is a Ukrainian startup that develops a platform for connecting companies with proven graphic designers. Most of the designers on the platform are from Ukraine. AIN.Capital reminds our readers that in March 2023, the startup raised $800,000, among the investors were people from Y Combinator.

• The USA is the third country after Ukraine and Spain where Preply has physical offices.
• The company has about 600 employees in 30 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States, the company told the journalists. According to the startup’s forecasts, at least 25 employees will work in the American office by the end of the year. The company added that since July 2022, their team has increased by more than 20%.
• Chief Brand Officer Sofia Tavares and Chief Revenue Officer Jerry Kingkade have joined the US office team.
• Preply plans to expand its presence in the US, writes Forbes, quoting Kingkade: “Up to 75% of working Americans believe that foreign language skills are important to their career opportunities. As we launch our US presence in New York, we look forward to gaining momentum, serving the needs of this working-age population, and playing a role in filling a specific vacancy in the labor market.”
• Currently, about 40,000 tutors with students from 180 countries use the platform. Most students are from the USA, Germany, Poland, Great Britain, and Canada.

Rebranding

In addition to launching the new location, Preply also announced a rebranding and a new visual style for the project. The new look of the brand was developed by the London agency Koto.

“Continuing with our brand idea, repetition has become a key component of our visual identity. We use it as a graphic tool to reinforce the concept of practice, progress, growth, and transformation. This is perfectly reflected in our logo, typography, and use of illustrations,”

Sofia Tavares, marketing director, commented on the new visual style.

What is the Preply valuation?

EdTech startup Preply, founded in 2013 by Ukrainians Kyryl Bigai, Serhii Lukianov, and Dmytro Voloshyn, has been growing rapidly. Over the past three years, the company’s revenues have increased tenfold due to user experience improvements for both teachers and students.

In July 2023, Preply raised $70 million in the form of equity and loan capital, these funds became part of the C round, the total amount of which is $120 million.

Despite the fact that the co-founders do not disclose the valuation of the company, according to the trusted website Pitchbook, it may be worth $440 million as of July 2023.

• The European service Dealroom indicates that Preply’s current valuation is $432 million. It is assessed considering the entire C round of $120 million.
• At the same time, CBInsights wrote that Preply’s valuation was close to $400 million as early as of 2022, after raising $50 million.

Earlier, the uninvolved investors were interviewed by the editors of AIN.Capital, reported that after the last round, Preply’s valuation exceeded $500 million and may be in the $500 million — $600 million range. According to one of the interviewees, the company’s valuation may even exceed $600 million. Considering the fact that Preply did not even have time to use the funds from the previously raised $50 million and is currently an attractive business for investors.

Local engineers will work on solutions for mobility, telecommunications and media, financial services and retail. Intellias HERE Technologies, LG, Siemens, Swissquote Bank, KIA, TomTom, HelloFresh, Xerox PARC and Deloitte.

Four vacancies in India are active on the company’s website:

• Senior Frontend Adobe AEM developer,
• Senior Full Stack developer,
• Senior Node.js developer,
• Senior AWS DevOps Engineer.

Intellias is a partner for several Fortune 500 companies. In July 2022, the company opened 4 new development centers in Spain and Portugal. And before that, it bought the service company Digitally Inspired, which develops products for retail.

• According to the company, employees can choose hybrid or full-time work in the new offices.

“Our luxofters from Iași and Cluj can now enjoy the benefits of a truly flexible workplace that perfectly suits the unique needs of their teams – new offices are available in these two locations. Hybrid or remote – however you work best works for Luxoft,”

the company states.

• Luxoft Romania has been established since 2001. The company currently has approximately 2300 employees working from different locations in the country.
• Luxoft has two offices in Bucharest and almost 200 job openings in Romania, most of them are remote. The new locations in Iași and Cluj-Napoca will enable the company to continue to grow its team in the region, which is now one of the most attractive talent pool in CEE.
• Earlier Luxoft also announced its new office in Turkey.
• Luxoft is a digital strategy and software engineering firm providing technology solutions for businesses. Acquired by U.S. company DXC Technology in 2019, Luxoft is a global operation in 44 cities and 21 countries with a workforce of nearly 18,000 people.

• Michał Tucki as the Country Manager, ex-operations manager of Bolt Poland, will be responsible for the development of Mate academy in Poland. The company plans to increase the Polish part of the team to 20 employees by the end of the year, including local coordinators, mentors, and support managers.
• From the beginning, students will have access to frontend technology, which offers learning such programming languages as HTML/CSS, Javascript, React/Redux, and Algorithms. All training materials on the platform are available in Polish and English. Also, everyone will be able to take a basic course for free.

About Mate academy

• Mate academy trains students from the UK, Asia, and Europe. More than 2000 students have already been employed around the world. The startup’s graduates find jobs in well-known companies including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. 
• The product’s business model is based on an Income Share Agreement with the client. This format allows students to study programming for free and get assistance in the process of finding a job, in exchange for paying 12% of their monthly salary for three years only after employment. 

“Mate academy is a student’s friend who guides them all the way to their first job in IT. We are on our way to an ambitious mission – to teach programming to 1 million people worldwide and help them get their first job in IT. As part of the study for international groups, our team has already been working with students from all over the globe. Realizing the potential of the Polish market is the next step. Strategically, we aim to become one of the leaders among edtech players in Poland. By the end of 2023, we plan to train and employ 1000 locals,“

Roman Apostol, CEO, and co-founder of Mate academy, says.

• In November 2021, Mate academy raised a $1.9 million investment from Wise (Transferwise), Teleport, Pipedrive, and Bolt. The round was supported by Horizon Capital and existing investors TA Ventures and Flyer One Ventures. The startup was aimed to spend the funds on the expansion in the American and Polish markets.

Previously, Mate Academy’s representative told AIN.Capital about the company’s so-called “no boolshit” corporate culture, what does it consist of and how it works for business. You can read the full story here.

• New R&D center in Toronto was opened in August, 2022. Miratech anticipates the new R&D center will initially employ 50 technologists within the first year. The company also offers its Ukrainian employees to relocate to the new office in Canada.
• The Ontario region is well known for its IT talent. Besides, Toronto named as one of the fastest growing markets, and with the IT services market in North America expected to grow to $661 billion in 2026, it makes this the ideal time and location. 

“We are excited about our business expansion to Canada. We greatly appreciate the Canadian people and the government’s support for the people of Ukraine. We see this as a remarkable opportunity to bring our services to Canadian corporations, leveraging the engineering talent we employ in Ukraine, Canada, and around the world,”

commented Valeriy Kutsyy, Miratech CEO

• The other hub in Bangalore was opened the beginning of October. By the end of this year, the team in India will exceed 100 engineers, and it is anticipated that number to grow throughout the year.
• India has one of the fastest-growing talent pools for the IT and Information Technology enabled Services (ITeS) industries and is known for its competitive landscape, agility and excellence, and availability of skilled talent. So the company plans to hire mostly local specialists in Bangalore.

Miratech is a Ukrainian IT service provider, launched in 1989. Up to date the company employs more than 700 specialists, 500 of them are Ukrainians. In 2020, Miratech adopted a RemoteTogether culture based on its commitment to engaging exceptional talent that can be recognized throughout the world. This allowed the company to have a talent pool across 25 countries around the world.

Earlier this year Miratech attracted the US private-equity firm Horizon Capital as a minor shareholder. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Currently, the company is actively hiring specialists in its Vilnius office.

• The fintech company NovaPay is part of the Nova Poshta, one of the largest Ukrainian private postal operator, group of companies. Having offices in Kyiv and now in Vilnius, it has been operating in the Ukrainian market since 2014.
• NovaPay offers both online and offline financial products to individuals and businesses. In particular, the company provides financial services for Nova Poshta, including money transfers across Ukraine and from abroad, utility and other payments, and internet acquiring for business.
• According to NovaPay, the company’s payment system is the leader among all money transfer systems in Ukraine created by non-banking institutions.

The office is designed for 100 employees and is already operating. It is also actively hiring. All job openings in the Polish office can be found here.

Creatio is a unified platform provider for process automation and CRM using the company’s no-code technologies. Its tools allow users to create interfaces without restrictions and without a single line of code. It helps to quickly compose functionality from pre-made modules and templates and to automate all business processes necessary for enterprises.

Creatio operates in 110 countries worldwide and has 7 offices, one of which is in Ukraine. About 700 people are currently working in the company. Clients in Ukraine include Multiplex, Ukrtelecom, OTP Bank, Intertop, Ajax Systems, DataGroup, and many others.

Now Netflix is hiring. The company is looking for specialists with good knowledge of local languages to complete the team of the new regional office in Warsaw.

“We plan to open a Netflix CEE office in Warsaw later this year that will function as a hub for the region. The Netflix office in Warsaw is a natural next step for us and will help build long-term cooperation in the region as well as deepen existing ties, creating new opportunities for content creators and producers. The creativity and potential of the local industry make Warsaw a great place to base our business across Central and Eastern Europe,”

the Netflix Jobs web page says.

Currently, the job opening are the following:

• Marketing Production Manager with knowledge of Polish;
• Social Marketing Manager with written and oral communication skills in English and in at least one CEE Language (Polish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian);
• Marketing Manager with written and oral communication skills in English and fluency in any of the languages (Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Ukrainian).

You can find all vacancies here.

Netflix localized its service in Poland in 2016. Soon after that its streaming became available in Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian. In 2021 the service was also localized in Ukrainian. Throughout this time, CEE has become a strategic production hub for Netflix’s international shows, with major titles like Extraction 2 or Shadow & Bone S01 successfully shot in the region recently.

Why is it interesting

The Netflix office in Warsaw will help the company to build a long-term cooperation in the region and deepen existing ties, creating new opportunities for content creators and producers.

For Ukrainians, the opening of the new regional office in Poland, which will also cover Ukrainian market among others, is definitely good news. Western companies often mixed up Ukraine with russia, which is wrong and inappropriate, especially considering the fact that russia launched a hybrid war with Ukraine in 2014, and a full-scale war on February 24, 2022.

Netflix doesn’t make this mistake anymore. Moreover, the company suspended its services in russia and stopped the production of all russian projects in the early March.

The opening of a new space will be a great opportunity to meet the founders of Ukrainian startup projects, representatives of Polish venture capital funds and institutions of the business environment from Poland and Ukraine in one place,

the PUSB representatives noted.

To participate in the opening event, the startups need to fill in the form.

What is offered to Ukrainian entrepreneurs?

In the new co-working space, each entrepreneur will receive a place for work and business meetings, an opportunity to exchange experience, as well as will find new forms of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation in the field of innovative projects.

PUSB co-working can be used by startups that meet the following conditions:

• The startup’s team consists of Ukrainians that launched the products and/or services with high technological potential by February 24.
• The startup conducts its business or is looking for opportunities to expand the project’s activities in Poland and the European Union.
• The startup has been officially registered for no longer than 60 months (there may be a different form of  individual entrepreneurship or LLC registration).

To become a co-working’s participant, the startups need to register on the Polish-Ukrainian Startup Bridge website. The total number of co-working participants is limited to 30 places.

• Yalantis is a Ukrainian IT company that provides custom software development and engineering services to businesses worldwide. It has offices in Dnipro, Kyiv, Lviv, Larnaca, and employs over 500 specialists.
• According to Denis Rudenko, COO at Yalantis, at the time the company decided to open the office in Poland, there were already 30 specialists there.
• Now Yalantis is expanding the team. It is looking for Rust Developers, React.js Developers, Java Developers, DevOps Engineers (AWS), Senior Scrum Master, and an Engagement Manager. According to Rudenko, the Yalantis prefer to hire Ukrainians living in Poland.
• More job openings are available on Yalantis website.
• At the same time, Yalantis has developed a relocation program for those company specialists who want to move to Poland. It provides financial assistance and offers an adaptation program.

The decision to expand our presence into Croatia was a logical step in our business growth strategy. We have the opportunity to further expand staffing and capabilities in our software engineering, professional services, and customer support departments, as well as increase our ability to service current and future markets,

said Andriy Krupa, Chief Executive Officer at ELEKS.

• The company is currently hiring and seeking talented software specialists to grow its team in Croatia. There are 17 positions opened, including Middle/Senior QA Engineer, Data Analyst, Solution Architect (.NET).

About ELEKS

ELEKS is a global software development company with 17 offices across 13 countries and three continents – including Western Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Croatia, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, and UAE.

According to the research of AIN.Capital, at the beginning of 2022, ELEKS took 11th place among the largest outsourcing companies in Ukraine. The local team comprised over 1,970 people.

• It is the second development center that the company has set up in Ukraine in the last few months. It was the active community of company employees gathered in Vinnytsia who initiated the opening of the office.
• Currently, the office is ready to accept about ten colleagues, planning to visit it regularly. If necessary, P2H could increase the number of workplaces in the future.
• The office is located in the city center. The staff themselves took part in the creation of the work area. It includes several zones: an open space with workplaces, a meeting room, relax zone, and a kitchen.

“P2H employees initiated the opening of the new office themselves. Due to the military actions in Ukraine, most of our specialists are scattered around the world in different cities and even countries. Nevertheless, we are trying to preserve the internal P2H culture we’ve been creating over the years in our largest office in Kharkiv. Therefore, if at least 5-10 people want to gather and work in a certain city, we are ready to help them and open an office there. Our offices operate in the format of coworking spaces, so their doors are open to all colleagues who are temporarily or permanently located in these cities. Moreover, we are used to compensating the cost of renting coworking workspaces if there is no P2H office in this town. All for the convenience of our colleagues,”

said Dmytro Mashchenko, Main Delivery Director at P2H.

• The P2H opened another office in Lviv shortly before. Most employees, who were forced to leave Kharkiv because of war, are currently working here.
• The P2H office in Lviv is designed for 30 regular visitors. But there is more to come.
• P2H is about to expand the network of its representative offices in other countries. The opening of the offices in Portugal, Poland, and other European countries, where some of the company’s employees have moved because of war, is under consideration. Also, the company plans to open an office in Saudi Arabia soon — one of the most significant P2H partners is located.

• CyberCare is part of Tesonet. It helps tech companies provide customer support by adding a human touch mixed with a splash of innovative solutions. The company, in particular, develops tools such as chatbots to help communicate with customers.
• CyberCare is based in Vilnius with an additional office in Kaunas. The company employs up to 420 people and serves clients in more than 170 countries.
• The new office in Lviv will become the third support hub of CyberCare. The company plans to hire support specialists first, with developers and programmers to be hired later, as needed.
• The location was chosen for a reason. The company wanted to support Ukraine, which suffers from the unprovoked war started by Russia, and its people “who are also fighting for our freedom.” CyberCare believes that the employment of people in the war zone contributes to the economy of Ukraine.
• But the main reason is that there are many competent young specialists in Lviv whose expertise is quite relevant for CyberCare, said CEO Dainius Vanagas.

• The company’s new hub was opened in Wroclaw in the Spaces Wroclavia co-working space.
• According to N-iX, its specialists can choose when and how often to work from the new co-working space.
• It is N-iX’s second location in Poland. The Krakow office appeared in June 2022.

“We are actively working in the Polish talent market and growing our team there. In June, we opened the N-iX office in Krakow. Now we have found a comfortable and modern co-working space for our colleagues in Wroclaw,” Maryana Makovetska, Administrative Director at N-iX, comments.

About N-iX

• N-iX is a Ukrainian IT company founded in 2002.
• The company provides software development services and expertise in cloud solutions, data engineering, embedded systems, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and other emerging technologies.
• Since the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the company has relocated most of its employees to safer regions and, despite everything, has continued to operate.
• As of May 2022, N-iX already employed more than 1,800 people and, according to Pavel Deshchynskyi, had several new contracts.
• The company has also announced a new office in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

• GlobalLogic is aimed to build a team of 120 people in Gdańsk. It will work on the latest solutions in embedded systems development, cybersecurity, IoT, or communication. 
• The company currently has more than 1,100 open positions all around the world, more than 400 of them are in Poland, and 35 are in Gdańsk, including Embedded Software Developers, DevOps Engineers, and Automation Testing Engineers.
• In February 2022, GlobalLogic opened the 1,000-person development center in Wrocław. It has innovative IT laboratories for development testing. There, engineers are creating, developing, and testing IT solutions in the field of automotive technology, Industry 4.0, cloud service, or telecom.
• As GlobalLogic told AIN.Capital, the company also plans to launch a new development center in Katowice in the nearest future.
• Meanwhile, the company continues its global expansion. By the end of 2022, GlobalLogic’s offices will appear in at least three new countries. The scaling will allow the company to strengthen technical expertise in the regions and facilitate the exchange of experience between specialists.

The location was chosen due to various reasons. Prague is a popular travel destination and is also an advanced IT hub in the CEE region. The city has many tech companies and favorable business conditions.

So when many of Sigma Software’s specialists chose the city as a relocation site, the company decided to establish a constant presence in the Czech Republic. Currently, the company has already started building an international team in Prague.

As Sigma Software’s spokesperson from the Ukrainian office told AIN.Capital, the Prague office is located in a co-working space and already counts more than ten employees. 

The team will grow not only with the new local specialists but also with Ukrainians, who moved to Prague after the beginning of the full-scale war started by russia.

All job openings with the tag Europe are available for candidates located in the Czech Republic.

• As Intellias CEO and co-founder Vitaly Sedler explained, the decision to enter the Spanish and Portuguese markets was dictated by the company’s business strategy for globalization. The IT industry is developing rapidly in these countries. According to him, there is also a good environment for living and professional growth.
• The new R&D centers, in particular, will allow Intellias to interact and communicate more effectively with its customers in Europe and other regions.
• By the end of 2022, the company plans to welcome more than 100 specialists to the new offices, including local talents and Ukrainians who have relocated to Spain or Portugal. The headquarter of Intellias remains in Ukraine.
• Currently, the company has more than 200 job openings, which you can find here. There are five positions available directly in Spain and Portugal:
  • Country Head for Spain
  • Talent Delivery Manager (Portugal)
  • Technical Team Lead/ Scala Developer (Madrid)
  • Rust Automotive Engineer (Porto)
  • Senior Talent Delivery Specialist (Spain)

• A few months ago, Intellias opened development centers in three Polish cities: Warsaw, Wrocław, and Gdańsk. It also has offices in Ukraine and Bulgaria.

• According to the startup, the United Kingdom is the leader in Europe by volume of investment, as well as the first country in the region where the number of IT companies with a capitalization of over $1 billion has reached a hundred. Accordingly, the local presence of Headway in the capital is an additional opportunity for raising funds and developing its business.
• Headway has an office in Warsaw and Lviv, which appeared due to the team’s evacuation. The Kyiv office has partially resumed its work. There is also an office in Nicosia and now in London. There are only 150 people in the Headway team.
• There are currently about 20 job openings at Headway. The company plans to add 40 more by the end of July. All the positions are fully remote, with the option to visit the office. You can check out all the job openings here.

• Headway is an IT company that creates EdTech products that help users develop their skills through concise formats of educational content: courses, videos, games, infographics, etc. The startup’s main product is the Headway app.
• The Headway app is an educational app that allows users to read a book in 15 minutes. It contains summaries and main ideas of 1000+ non-fiction books about business, motivation, and psychology. They are divided into categories and available in text and audio formats.
• Over 12 million users worldwide have downloaded this app. Apple regularly tops it on its stores in 140+ countries. Last year, Headway was No. 1 worldwide by number of downloads in its category.
• Since the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the company has not stopped hiring and has launched several social projects to support Ukraine. The team created a free collection of summaries about Russia’s crimes against Ukraine for the app audience from 140 countries with an appeal to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the humanitarian needs of Ukrainians. The company also developed a series of safety infographics based on official sources to help Ukrainians keep themselves and their loved ones safe during the war.

• The new office of the Ukrainian company will appear in Ottawa.
• As Pingle Game Studio says, the Canadian office opening does not mean a business relocation. The creative and development teams stay in Ukraine. It is the company’s conscientious position.
• Pingle already has offices in Dnipro, Kyiv, and Kharkiv. In March 2022, the company also set up an office in Lviv, as well as announced the opening of a new location in London. In addition, the company has a representative office in Los Angeles.
• Pingle Game Studio is a global game development partner. The company focuses on providing porting, full-cycle development, design, and testing services for AAA games. Since its inception in 2007, Pingle Studio has worked with Epic Games, Disney, Lucasfilm, Embracer Group, Team17, Zynga, Square Enix, Qualcomm, and tinyBu.
• As of June 2022, Pingle Game Studio employs 400 people, as per Dmytro Kvtun, CEO of Pingle Game Studio.
• The company’s well-known projects include porting the games Hello Neighbor and My Time At Portia.

“Years of experience with major game-making technologies and various generations of consoles make us a powerful contributor when it comes to developing and porting games. We’ve completed more than 75 projects since starting the company,” Dmytro comments.

• The decision to open the full-fledged office was made because the local team is growing. Almost 100 of the company’s specialists have moved to Poland since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Pavlo Deshchynskyi, COO at N-iX, noted.

“Additionally, now we are working even more actively on the Polish talent market and increasing our team there,” Deshchynskyi said.

• N-iX’s office in Kraków is located in the Zabłocie Business Park business center and has 40 workplaces.

“Our colleagues in Poland will further be able to choose in which format to work, and the N-iX office will be a center for comfortable cooperation and offline communication,” Pavlo Deshchynskyi explained.

About N-iX

N-iX is a Ukrainian IT company with headquarters in Lviv, Ukraine. Founded in 2002, N-iX offers expert solutions in software engineering, cloud-native services, data analytics, embedded software, IoT, machine learning, and other tech domains covering a wide variety of sectors, including finance, manufacturing, telecom, to name a few. As of May 2022, N-iX already has more than 1,800 employees.

• It is the fifth Grammarly hub. The company already has ones in Kyiv, San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver.
• The company embraces a remote-first hybrid working model. It means that the team members can work remotely and meet quarterly at the hubs to work together for a few weeks.
• So far, Grammarly already employs over 700 people. And the company continues to expand its global team, offering more than 100 job openings.
• The company invites Ukrainians who temporarily left Ukraine due to the war to apply for jobs in Germany, Poland, and Portugal.

Grammarly retains its two-story hub in Kyiv, but now it remains closed for safety reasons. All current and new colleagues in Ukraine work only remotely for now.

Grammarly keeps supporting members of the Ukrainian team in Ukraine and abroad. All Grammarly team members who require extra days off to volunteer or take care of family or their health — can have extra paid time off from work. Professionals who become members of Ukraine’s Armed Forces will keep paid for twelve months.

Grammarly is a Ukrainian company that provides a digital writing assistant to help people write clearly and effectively in English.  The company was founded by Ukrainians Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn, and Dmytro Lider in 2009.

“Establishing Grid Dynamics India gives us access to an exponential, broadly diverse talent pool and enables our scaling efforts as a public company,” said Leonard Livschitz, CEO of Grid Dynamics. “The Hyderabad location, with modern, class-A workspaces and a concentration of highly skilled and educated engineers, will be a key contributor to our ongoing growth and help strengthen shareholder value.”

• Grid Dynamics will achieve its aggressive hiring goals through multiple paths, including Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) deals with selected partners, direct hiring, and potential merger and acquisition activities.
• The company is focused on hiring reputable business and technology veterans in the region to serve as coaches and mentors to its workforce.
• Grid Dynamics India is also building forums and communities, such as Women Leaders in Technology, to support diversity and encourage participation by women STEM professionals.
• Similar to its operations in Central & Eastern Europe, Grid Dynamics India workforce will have expertise across many technological areas, including:
  • Platform engineering and agile development 
  • CI-CD/DevOps/MLOps 
  • Data engineering expertise across all major cloud platforms
  • AI and Machine Learning
  • UX/UI and design thinking 
  • Enterprise and solution architecture 

About Grid Dynamics

• Grid Dynamics provides digital transformation consulting and implementation services in omnichannel customer experience, big data analytics, search, artificial intelligence, cloud migration, and application modernization. 
• Founded in 2006, Grid Dynamics is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices across the US, Mexico, UK, Netherlands, Mexico, Switzerland, India, and Central and Eastern Europe.

The new Ukrainian office will open in Khust. According to Polosukhin, HebronSoft has already registered there legally and is relocating employees now. The company says that Khust is relatively close to Romania, where HebronSoft intends to move in the future.

“Khust is a city with relatively good IT infrastructure and fairly good quality of life and work. We have hired new workers who were evacuated from Kherson. We want to relocate them to Khust. We’ve already found accomodation, kindergartens for children, etc.,” comments Kostiantyn Polosukhin.

Polosukhin also noted that the company would open a new office in Romania “within the next month.” New HebronSoft’s location will be in the city of Baia Mare. There the company plans to hire local specialists and is also ready to relocate its Ukrainian team to Romania.

“We also assess this country in terms of the quality of life, compensation, taxation, and market. We have already found several locations for a new office or coworking. Now we’re going to work on one of these models,” HebronSoft’s CEO told DOU.

According to DOU, before the full-scale war, the company planned to open an office in Kamianets-Podilskyi. However, they had to suspend integration in this city.

Currently, HebronSoft has about 70 people working on the Ukrainian team. The company plans to hire another 15-20 specialists. In particular, it is looking for a Senior Fullstack (React+Node.js) Developer. The company also considers further integration into Poland.

SoftServe is one of the largest IT companies with Ukrainian roots. In recent years, it has been opening R&D centers in different countries across the world.

Last year, for example, the company opened an office in Dubai. SoftServe also operates in South America.

The company crossed the 10,000 employee mark in 2021. The company explains this growth of the staff by the very high demand for digital services and the increase in the number of clients over the last year. Previously, only EPAM had hit the 10,000-employee mark.

“Eastern Europe talent is a key cornerstone in the global digital solutions and services market. We know that from our experience in Ukraine, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Romania. The IT industry in Bulgaria is growing at double digits – and I think our 20 years of experience in developing and nurturing talent in this field will support this dynamic,” said Kulraj Smagh, CEO of Ciklum.

• The new office has opened in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, and already employs more than a hundred professionals.
• The company plans to accelerate the hiring of local professionals. Also, it offer jobs to Ukrainians who have been forced to temporarily leave their homes and move to safer locations due to the full-scale war with Russia.
• The company expects its center in Bulgaria to hire several hundreds of tech professionals throughout the country.
• Last year, Ciklum acquired CN Group, a Czech-based software developer, and now continues to strengthen its position in the international market.

About Ciklum

• Ciklum is a product engineering and digital services company serving Fortune 500 and fast-growing organizations.
• Headquartered in the UK, Ciklum has 4,000+ software developers, designers, product managers, and data scientists across the globe who build tailored digital solutions that leverage emerging technologies.
• Ciklum has offices in six cities in Ukraine with over 1,500 developers.
• The company also has R&D centers in Poland, Romania, Spain, Israel, and Pakistan. It employs about 5,000 specialists around the world.

Headquartered in Cyprus, Parimatch Tech already has R&D centers located in four countries, the largest of which is in Ukraine. 

In the new Czech office, Relocatiоn Specialist will be responsible for:

• employees relocation support;
• accommodation issues, financial, legal, and other domestic questions;
• schools and kindergartens assistance;
• building partnerships with organizations (realtors, law firms);
• handling emails and telephone calls with service suppliers, negotiating discrepancies to ensure quality standards;
• consulting employees on the relocation arrangement process;
• managing ad-hoc requests;
• will participate in other projects of the Admin Department.

As Talent Acquisition Stream Lead at Parimatch Tech Oleksandra Borysenko explained, the company is looking for local employees in the Czech Republic. There is no relocation option.

“This technology uses certain frequencies and equipment (stations). According to the legislation of Ukraine, as well as any other country, the launch of such a project requires certification of equipment and frequencies. We must provide these frequencies to a certain legal entity, and in this case, it can only be a representative office of Space X Starlink in Ukraine,” Fedorov explained to AIN.UA.

According to Fedorov, only this representative office, as the technology owner, can submit the equipment for official certification. Because of the lack of certification, we had a situation in which civilians were forbidden to use Starlink internet terminals. Basically, they were used at critical infrastructure facilities.. As of today, the problem seems to have been solved.

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation providing satellite internet access coverage to populations with little or no connectivity. Starlink is already working in Ukraine for essential wartime infrastructure: power plants, military bases, industrial enterprises, and medical facilities.

• Intellias also has offices that continue to operate in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk. Over 1,300 of the company’s employees evacuated to the western regions of Ukraine when the full-scale war began.
• Intellias temporarily suspended operations in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa.
• Previously, the company evacuated more than 390 specialists to Krakow. It has an R&D center there since 2019. In April-May 2022, Intellias plans to set up three more offices in Poland — in Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Gdansk.
• Apart from opening the Polish offices, Intellias plans to open additional R&D centers in Croatia, Columbia, Bulgaria, and other countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
• Currently, the company has about 240 job openings, and half of the positions are planned to be filled by Ukrainian engineers.

• According to the company’s press service, the exit plan has been in the works since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February.
• Grid Dynamics had offices in Saratov and St. Petersburg. Russian employees were offered to relocate. Most of them have already moved.
• The company has R&D centers in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro, and other cities. The company also offered relocation to Ukrainians.

“Our exit from Russia is timely and necessary. Grid Dynamics has an unwavering commitment to Ukraine, our employees, and the future of humanity,” said Leonard Livschitz, Grid Dynamics CEO.

• Grid Dynamics has also announced the opening of new offices in Zug, Switzerland, and Yerevan, Armenia.
• The new office in Yerevan already employs more than a hundred engineers. The Armenian office is expected to grow several times in 2022.
• Grid Dynamics is a digital-native technology services provider that accelerates growth and bolsters competitive advantage for Fortune 1000 companies. The company has offices across the US, Mexico, UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Central and Eastern Europe. Among its clients are Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, PayPal, and other tech giants. The company is listed on NASDAQ.

• The company has been working on the launch for the past six months.
• The main reason for opening the office is the support of clients from Romania and development in the local market. Also, according to Semenyshyn, Romania rates among the top 20 countries with the best software engineers globally. So the company will have access to quality human resources.
• Currently, SoftServe has more than 80 job openings for the new office.

• According to ELEKS, its new office in Kraków will strengthen the company’s presence in the region and boost partnerships with new and existing clients in the European market.
• The company plans significantly expand its team in Poland and has already started looking for professionals. Recently, ELEKS has already scaled its presence in the country to over 250 employees working in the Kraków R&D center.

“According to Stack Overflow, the tech talent pool in the country counts more than 250,000 software developers. Moreover, Poland abides by the data protection legislation to fulfill EU high-security standards,” ELEKS commented on the feasibility of opening the office in Poland.

About ELEKS

ELEKS is a global software development company with 17 offices across 13 countries and three continents – including Western Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Croatia, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, and UAE.

According to the research of AIN.Capital, at the beginning of 2022, ELEKS took 11th place among the largest outsourcing companies in Ukraine. The local team comprised over 1,970 people.

• The new office was launched in Uzhgorod on Babiak Street.
• According to EPAM, the new location works as a co-working space for 50 people.
• The office is equipped with a shelter for up to 40 people. EPAM workers and their families forced to leave their homes can live there. EPAM’s office in Debrecen, Hungary, helped organize this shelter — provided necessary humanitarian aid, such as sleeping bags, food, hygiene products, etc.

“Hundreds of our colleagues, internally displaced persons, will be able to use the new office, work, and support the economy of Ukraine in safer conditions,” comments Andrey Trofimov, head of the Western Ukraine location of ERAM Ukraine.

• As of 2022, EPAM’s Ukrainian representative office employs 13,500 people. Due to Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, the company stopped providing services to clients from Russia.
• AIN.Capital has also learned about the plans to close the Russian development center. At the same time, EPAM stopped hiring employees in the Belarusian office.
• The company allocated $100 million to support its teams in Ukraine and their families.

• More than 500 specialists now co-work with GlobalLogic in Wrocław. The opening of the center will allow the company to continue its development in the city and to double the team of IT specialists by 2024.
• GlobalLogic currently has more than 300 open positions in Europe (Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, Sweden, Switzerland), more than 160 of them are in Poland. This gives additional opportunities for professionals if they need to relocate.
• The designer modular co-working spaces and conference rooms of the new Wrocław office resemble development centers in the US and Japan. The office has professional equipment, so engineers can communicate and collaborate effectively. Also, there are isolated booths where the specialist can stay alone.
• The new office has innovative IT laboratories for developments testing. There, engineers will create, develop, and test IT solutions in the field of automotive technology, Industry 4.0, cloud service, or telecom.
• GlobalLogic is a Hitachi Group IT company. It was acquired by Hitachi Ltd in 2021.
• In Ukraine the company has offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Mykolaiv. According to the DOU, in summer 2021, the company employed about 6,000 tech specialists, which made it one of the largest IT companies in Ukraine by the number of employees, right after EPAM and SoftServe.

• N-iX is an Eastern European IT company with headquarters in Lviv, Ukraine. Founded in 2002, N-iX offers expert solutions in software engineering, cloud-native services, data analytics, embedded software, IoT, machine learning, and other tech domains covering a wide variety of sectors, including finance, manufacturing, telecom, supply chain, to name a few.
• N-iX has been cooperating with remote specialists from different locations in Ukraine for a couple of years now and has formed the N-iX community in different cities. In Dnipro and Ivano-Frankivsk, the company cooperates with over 30 specialists, and there are 15 specialists in Vinnytsia.
• In Kharkiv, N-iX is presented as Novelix with more than 60 specialists.
• The first new office is planned in Dnipro, and the location has already been decided. 
• The first new office is planned in Dnipro, and the location has already been decided.
• N-iX professionals can choose between three types of work — office-based, flexible, or fully remote. In cities where there are no N-iX offices yet, the company offers to work in the best coworking spaces.

“Last year, we made a decision that we are ready to open N-iX offices in Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, and Vinnytsia, as we intend to increase the number of teams there, would like to develop our communities and provide the most comfortable working conditions for our specialists. Also, we are planning to become even more involved in the development of technical education in these cities,” comments Pavlo Deshchynskyi, Chief Operating Officer at N-iX.

• By the end of 2022, the company plans to hire over 60 engineers working on Embedded, Java, Mobile, IoT, and other technologies.
• Teams from the new center will be involved in the company’s long-term projects in the automotive, telecom, fintech, and other industries. Intellias is currently looking for Java developers in Serbia.
• The Serbian office will be located in Novi Sad, the country’s second-largest city.
• The first Intellias subsidiary outside of Ukraine was opened in Poland in 2019. In total, the company has eight such centers, six of which are located in Ukraine — in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Dnipro. In 2021, the Intellias team grew by 70%.
• Intellias is one of the largest Ukrainian tech companies, with 2,500 employees. Over 2 billion people use the technology products developed by Intellias engineers.

With over 500,000 IT professionals employed in software engineering in Mexico, Colombia, and Chile combined, and given its geographical proximity to the US, Latin America is an attractive destination for the global delivery operations of major technology players.

“Entering a new market is a significant step for the company. It is important for us not only to expand geography and become closer to our partners in North America but also to transfer our experience and values to another continent. And this is proactive participation in the development of the local IT industry, the building of IT communities through the support of education, employee development, the introduction of the best social responsibility initiatives, environmental practices, and charitable projects,” comments Yaroslav Lyubinets, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, SoftServe.

The company plans to hire 3,000 employees in Latin America by the end of 2025. Currently, the company has 50 job openings in the region. Also, this year, SoftServe plans to start cooperation with several technical universities in Guadalajara, Bogota, Medellin, and Santiago.

In total, SoftServe currently has more than 12,000 employees and 41 offices in 12 countries. The biggest number of development centers of the company are located in Ukraine, however, SoftServe’s presence in Poland and Bulgaria is also rapidly developing.

The new office will open in January 2022

According to the company’s representatives, the experience of autonomous R&D teams in Kharkiv and Vinnytsia has shown strong results. The Kharkiv office has developed Fibra, a new Ajax wired product line, and the Vinnytsia team will complement the product line with a brand new detector.

Ajax is now looking for talented engineers — embedded and hardware developers, Java developers, and project managers. The company will open the Lviv office in January 2022.

“Lviv is very attractive for IT companies, both outsourcing and product ones. We see a high potential in local developers and students and expect the team to create several new devices during the year,” said Aleksandr Konotopskyi, founder and CEO at Ajax Systems.

The Lviv team will develop new Ajax security system devices independently of the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Vinnytsia offices. You can find all Ajax Systems job openings for the Lviv office here.

• The company’s new development center is located in Chennai, one of India’s largest technology centers. According to Ciklum representatives, this will be the beginning of further expansion in the region. The company plans to grow its team in India soon.
• The press release says that the opening of the office is part of Ciklum’s strategy to expand geographically and further scale its business. The new R&D center is the second in Asia, and the company also has an office in Pakistan.
• Entering the Indian market will allow the company to accelerate the search and hiring of professionals to meet the high market demand for digital transformation services. It will also improve communication with global clients in terms of time zones.

“The new development center in India serves as additional proof of our global vision for geography, technology, and business verticals. I look forward to the further development of our engineering teams in this region and the mutual exchange of expertise,” comments Andrii Dehtiarov, VP of Engineering at Ciklum.

• The company has 12 representative offices across the world, 6 of which are located in Ukraine.
• As it became known earlier, Ciklum has acquired the Czech software developer CN Group. The company needed this deal to gain a foothold in the markets of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as DACH countries.

In the interview with AIN.UA, Aleksander Koenig, Settle’s CEO and founder told us about how he started the company, how it grew, and what role the company’s Ukrainian office plays in this story.

Let’s start with the backstory. How and when did you come up with the idea of founding Settle? What problem did you want to solve, and in what market? What is your business model today?

I was working on an early-stage company focused on ‘try before you buy,’ focused on retail clothing. We couldn’t figure out the unit economics was going to work, so we decided to shut down the business. But out of that experience, we were using this accounts payable tool to manage our vendor payments. I thought it was the worst product I have ever used. So when we were brainstorming new ideas to pursue, one idea was to just make a better accounts payable tool. 

I knew if we just built a prettier version of it that it wouldn’t be good enough. So we needed to figure out how to make it 10X better. And that’s when I was thinking about my background, in credit and lending [Editor’s note: Aleksander worked in Affirm for more than 4 years], and how could we combine credit with accounts payable? So that was the point we decided to start Settle. Let’s build a full-blown cash management platform, combining these two products into one cohesive user experience. 

All e-commerce companies suffer from the same issue — they have a huge cash-flow gap from buying inventory to turning those purchases into revenue. With us, we would completely absolve that need and allow them to grow quicker.

What was your initial capital? Was it savings or FFF money? When and at what attempt did you secure your first venture capital?

We knew we had 6-8 months of work to get an initial product out the door, so we ended up raising a Pre-Seed round in January of 2020. We raised money from my prior boss at Affirm, Max Levchin, amongst other angel investors, including WorkLife Ventures, Background Capital, Village Global, and Avlok Kohli, CEO of Angellist Ventures.

Who helped you from the start? Tell us about your first teammates from Ukraine. Why did you hire your first employees in Ukraine?

Eugene Rudyy, Serge Borbit, and Valeriy Myronov started with me from day 1. I met them at the previous startup we were working on, and I thought they were just fantastic. My co-founder of the previous startup has worked with them for a few years prior on a few different startup ideas on a full-time basis. 

So when we shut down the previous company, I did everything I could to convince them to start Settle with me. At the time, I flew to Lviv to meet them in person in the office we had. It was such a big change, I didn’t want to do it over Zoom. So we were able to spend a full 7 days thinking about the idea and planning how we should approach it. 

What was your impression about Ukraine during your first visit? Has it changed since then, and how? How often do you visit Ukraine?

I went in November of 2019. I’m originally from Warsaw, so Lviv really reminded me of a Polish city, which I guess was back in the day.

My grandmother’s family actually is from Lviv, so when I was there I was able to see some of the houses they grew up in and I visited the graveyard some of their relatives are buried in. 

Shane Moriah, our CTO, and I visited Lviv a few months back to spend time with the team. If it wasn’t for COVID, the plan was to visit more often and have the Ukraine team visit the US, but unfortunately, that made things difficult. We have to make visitations more often now that things have settled down a bit. 

Did the Ukrainian team of Settle work remotely at first? When did you decide to open the office?

While the US was remote to start, we actually had our first office in Lviv. When COVID hit, we went remote-first, so we weren’t forcing anyone into the office. And that’s the approach we’re taking now. We want to give employees as much flexibility as we can.

We’re currently opening a brand new office in Lviv, which will be much bigger and nicer, but the policy will remain the same. If you want to work from home, great. And if you want to work in the office, fantastic. Do what’s best for you!

Tell us about Settle nowadays: how many people does Settle hire? How many offices do you have and where are they?

Settle is 45 people today with about 10 or so joining over the next few months. It’s a really exciting time at the company when so much is changing.

We currently have three offices — in Lviv, San Francisco, and New York. We’re remote-first and will remain so, but find it useful to put in hubs in our most populous regions. I do find work is different in person. Instead of just relying on Slack and Zoom, you can just walk up to someone and ask them a question to resolve something sooner.

How did your Ukrainian team grow? What did they do? What are their responsibilities today?

Originally the team was responsible for the entire engineering and product design. Since the beginning, we’ve been recruiting engineers and product designers over the last two years. Now that we’ve grown in the US as well, about half of our engineering is based in Lviv.

We expect to double the team over the next year, so we’re looking for the most talented engineers and product designers!

What can you offer new hires to compete in the labour market? And what about the first employees in Ukraine – have you offered them stakes?

It is very important that every employee receives shares in the company. We want everyone in the company to act like an owner, and the only way to do that is to actually make them owners. So besides competitive pay, everyone receives shares. This way everyone can participate in the upside of the company. And I think what they’ll find is, they’ll make a lot more money from the shares than the salary.

What can you say about doing business and hiring people in Ukraine? What difficulties have you faced, and how did you overcome them? What pros and cons can you name?

Candidly, I don’t know the Ukraine market that well, so we’ve relied quite a bit on hiring through the networks of our Lviv team members. That can only last so long, so we have a recruiter based in Lviv starting soon, which will hopefully allow us to scale beyond our current network. 

We also want to play a bigger role in the city, so hopefully, we’ll be able to host some events and share our learnings. If we can help Lviv become a stronger tech hub, then it will only benefit us in the long run.

What are your plans for the future in terms of developing Settle? Please, share any interesting details.

There’s a lot of interesting projects we’re working on and plan on working on, including, scaling the core product, building more integrations building the vendor experience, and international expansion. 

• Sift already has 20 employees in Kyiv and plans to double their number over the next year.
• You can check out the company’s job openings here.
• While there are coronavirus restrictions in place, the company is hiring only for remote work. After the restrictions are lifted, Sift plans to continue supporting a hybrid work format.

Sift’s clients include international companies from the Fortune 500 list, such as Doordash, Uphold, Remitly, etc. The total number of clients is more than 34,000 sites and applications all over the world. The company secures payments and transactions. In the spring of 2021, Sift raised $50 million at a $1 billion valuation.

• The Kyiv office will employ 50 R&D and IT professionals, and that number is expected to triple in two years. The office will serve as a technical center where Ukraine’s highly-skilled specialists will work.
• Currently, the company has 12 job openings in Kyiv. It is looking for DevOps, PHP/WordPress, Android, and Full Stack developers.
• Similarweb already has an office in Ukraine. As reported by AIN.UA, it was created to quickly strengthen and expand the development resources in Kyiv back in 2015. Initially, Similarweb’s presence in Ukraine began as a partnership with Ciklum. However, all 15 employees of the Kyiv office become full-time employees of SimilarWeb by 2016.
• Similarweb has grown its staff across all 13 global offices this year. And it plans to continue its rapid global expansion into the new year.
• In 2021, Similarweb had a successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, when it secured an additional $165 million and raised its market capitalization to $1.6 billion ($1.377 billion at the time of writing).

About Velory

Velory offers Productivity-as-a-Service. It is working on an innovative product — a platform that optimizes for clients the work of their employees and makes teams more productive. The company was launched in 2014 and today serves about 30,000 customers worldwide.

The company was previously called Universal Avenue. In June 2020, it raised $7 million (60 million Swedish kronor) from Kaj Hed, Chairman of Rovio Entertainment. After that, it rebranded and expanded its team.

Today, Velory employs about 50 people and has two offices — in Gothenburg and the headquarters in Stockholm. Also, there will soon be an R&D office in Ukraine.

Why Ukraine?

“Interest in our platform is growing rapidly. So, we plan to double our production team to meet the growing demand. We visited Ukraine during a research trip in early 2020 and were amazed at the talent level of the professionals and the wonderful people we found. Since then, we have successfully started cooperating, and now we are taking the next step by opening our R&D center here,” Velory told AIN.UA.

Over the next 12 months, Velory plans to hire 20-25 React.js and Ruby professionals in Ukraine, who will work closely with developers in Sweden. The company told us that the team would initially work remotely, and the physical office will only be opened when the team is already fully assembled. Velory did not answer in which city the office will be located.

Dnipro office

During the last ten years, Playtika, a social casino company, was sold twice — for $140 million and $4.4 billion. It even went public in January 2021 and raised an additional $1.88 billion. Playtika was founded by Israelis Gigi Levy-Weiss and Uri Shahak, but from almost the very beginning, it was built in Ukraine.

Playtika’s first R&D center in Ukraine was opened in Vinnytsia, the second — in Kyiv. The third office was launched in Dnipro in 2012 as a result of a successful acqui-hiring of the Dnipro-based studio Alawar Southpoint.

The Dnipro R&D center, like the rest of the Ukrainian ones, is now headed by Israeli Ofer Dar, who previously managed the Kyiv studio House of Fun, which Playtika acquired in 2014.

Layoffs

As AIN.UA learned from its own sources, Playtika’s office in Dnipro will see some changes: some employees were offered a move to Bucharest, while the rest will leave the company in the first quarter of 2022. Specifically, we are talking about the team that worked on graphics and slot machines at Caesar casino. However, no one is talking about complete closure — there are still three job openings in the Dnipro office as of October 29. The remaining team will work on new projects. Perhaps it will work on developments for the companies that Playtika acquired in recent years — the German company Wooga and Finnish Reworks.

AIN.UA asked the company about the reasons for layoffs and relocation of the Dnipro office and how it would affect other Ukrainian offices. But at the time of publication, we did not receive any comments.

Risk factor

Notably, in its Q1 2021 report, Playtika, as an IPO company, named its R&D offices as risk factors — so-called country risks. Among the named offices were Ukraine, Romania, and Belarus. It is not clear whether these risks are equal. Meanwhile, as of 2021, Playtika employs 1,000 people in Ukraine, 600 in Belarus, and 500 in Romania. And together with people from Dnipro, this number will soon grow.

About Appsulove

The company was founded in 2016 in Minsk. During five years of its operation, it has released more than 35 mobile applications and games for iOS and Android. The most famous are UNICORN, Numberzilla, 3Tiles, Catris, Lava, Castle Rush. According to the company, these games have over 250 million downloads on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

There are currently over 130 employees working at Appsulove.

About the office in Kyiv

The first Appsulove office in Ukraine was opened in the middle of October 2021. It is located in Business Center “Arena City.” The company is planning to employ 50 specialists in the nearest future. The company has already posted ten job openings for Kyiv: Senior Mobile QA Engineer, Senior Unity Developer, Project Manager (gamedev, office), Lead Graphics Developer (Playable Ads), Lead Motion Designer, Game Producer, UI Artist, Motion Designer, Lead Monetization Manager (Head of Monetization).

As the company told the magazine, they have been working remotely with Ukrainian professionals for several years, and not only developers.

About TangoMe

The US-based company TangoMe Inc. entered the market in 2009 with its first product, a messenger. Today the company is developing a streaming platform, Tango. The application has over 400 million downloads and 10 million active users.

The target audience of the Tango platform is singers, musicians, artists, artists, gamers, athletes. The platform is one of the top 3 streaming services in the Western market.

Investors include Alibaba, Access Industries, and one of the co-founders of Zoom. The company has offices in California, Limassol, Tel Aviv, Minsk, and St. Petersburg. In 2021, TangoMe Inc. opened an office in Kyiv. Also, it plans to launch an R&D center in Vinnytsa.

Office in Kyiv

Tango has been recruiting for the Ukrainian team for three months. The Kyiv office now has 20 people, including the vice president of R&D, developers (Java, iOS, Android), QA engineers, a marketing specialist, a Data Science team, business analysts, and product managers.

The company plans to hire engineers and developers. The number of employees in the Kyiv office is expected to reach 150-200 people by the end of 2022. The company now has over 35 available positions.

“Ukraine has attracted attention not only because of its geography and not only as an outsourcing site. We like local specialists: their professional and personal qualities. We have already seen that Ukrainians also have creativity, which we are looking for in people all over the world,” said AIN.UA TangoMe’s representative.

There are currently three openings in the Kyiv office:

• Senior/Team Lead Android developer.
• Senior/Lead Java Developer.
• Senior/Lead iOS Developer.

Work at TangoMe Inc.

The company says that each team member is an essential partner in creating the product. TangoMe has a stock option program. TangoMe provides stock options to all employees based on employee rank and contribution.

“Stock options increase based on employee performance. As soon as the company goes public, all employees will be able to exercise their options and sell their shares. In our opinion, this works better than any motivational program,” the company said.