Focus on Europe: How Ukrainian startup Revisior enters international markets despite the war
And helps domestic businesses to keep in touch with customers
Mind continues to acquaint readers with the participants of the Web Summit technology conference, where 24 startups have represented Ukraine. Among them is a service for collecting reviews, Revisior. How does the company expand to international markets during the war? Why did it refuse to participate in the Dubai Expo in favour of the Armed Forces of Ukraine? From whom did it raise $310,000? The co-founder of the service Sergiy Shapirenko told about this and much more.
Earlier, Mind wrote about other participants of the summit – Releaf Paper, who produce eco-paper from fallen leaves, i3 Engineering home energy saving system, and MISU smart health monitoring solution.
About the essence of the product and the first steps
Revisior is a service for collecting feedback and assessing the quality of goods and services. One of its main tasks is to measure businesses their NPS (Net Promoter Score or Customer Loyalty Index).
On the left is Sergiy Shapirenko, CEO of Revisior, on the right is CIO Sergiy Goloborodko, CIO of Revisior
The company was founded by Sergiy Shapirenko and Sergiy Goloborodko. Now the team has 18 employees.
Sergiy Shapirenko recalls that back when he had been running an online store, a Czech company offered to integrate a feedback system. By connecting it, the business received more feedback than when they did it on their own. "People think that a brand can manipulate reviews, and third-party companies are more transparent," explains the company's co-founder. That's when the idea has arisen to develop an IT solution that would help not only receive reviews, but also measure the service. In early January 2018, the MVP was ready.
How the system works
The co-owner recalls that the team initially developed a feedback service through QR codes. Restaurants usually place them on tables, in transport, stickers are placed on windows. When scanning a QR code, customers are taken to a page where they can leave a rating according to certain criteria.
The feedback gets into the messenger of the administrator or the head of the department. Then the feedback is processed: you can call the client, solve his problem, record it and look at the analytics in a month.
Sergiy Shapirenko explains that the company does not process feedback by itself because each business has its own specifics. The company, however, has a system for delegating tasks and its own customer management friendly system, which helps to process feedback based on the data and experience of other companies and industries.
Later Revisior decided to add other resources: SMS-mailing, Viber and e-mail surveys. In total, the system has about 20 integrations and channels for receiving feedback, in particular, it has integration with Google and Google Maps
About competitors
In Sergiy Shapirenko’s words, the company has three advantages over global competitors – Medallia, Customer Gauge, Survicate: full-channel range, feedback processing and analytics. Revisior's competitor in Ukraine is a product from 4service. "It is simpler because ours covers more channels," the interlocutor considers.
The startup also does benchmarking and service analytics. Shapirenko says that they have been the first in Ukraine to do this. "For large or medium-sized customers, it is not the number of reviews that is important, but what to do next to become better. Therefore, we have a separate analytics department. 70–80% is done automatically by the system, and 20% is done by our analysts. It is actually possible to collect reviews even through a Google form, but how to process and analyse them is our advantage," sums up the co-founder.
About work during the war
Now the company's team is in Ukraine. With the full-scale war outbreak, about 80% of Revisior clients stopped working. Currently, the figures have returned to pre-war levels by about 90%.
Even before the invasion, the startup won two competitions: the company had to represent Ukraine at the Dubai Expo and at a technology conference in Silicon Valley, California. "Because of the war, the money we were supposed to spend on the conference was transferred to the Armed Forces. We understood that this way they would bring more benefits," says Sergiy Shapirenko.
About new markets
Due to the war, the company's focus shifted to the European market. Now the startup is scaling up in Europe. Since January 2022, the company has been incorporated in Poland, connecting the city of Zduńska Wola: transport, government agencies and some restaurants. Currently, negotiations are underway with large network businesses: retail, hotel, banking institutions and insurance companies..
Revisior plans to launch in Romania this year. Italy is also ready to launch, and the team plans to start working in the Czech Republic and the United States next year
About the business monetization model
The company has introduced a SaaS solution with a monthly subscription fee. In Europe, it starts from 70 euros per month for small businesses. For Ukraine, the system is cheaper, from 1,000 UAH per month. In addition, there are package solutions where the client pays from 350 to 1,800 euros depending on the number of reviews.
About customers
The main customers are the retail and hospitality industries. Currently, Revisior has about 150 clients: Intertop, Luxoptica, Pandora, New Balance, British American Tobacco, Watsons, Puzata Hata, Pesto café, TSUM, MHP, etc. They have connected almost 7,000 objects and outlets in Ukraine.
About work with state institutions
The company cooperates with them as well. The basic version of the service is free in Ukraine. It all started in Zhytomyr, where transport, laboratories, and clinics were connected. "Local media reported about us. When we had already connected outpatient clinics in Zhytomyr, the head of the Health Department recommended our service in Vinnytsia," recalls Sergiy Shapirenko. Then medical institutions in Rivne, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kyiv joined. About 100 educational institutions in Ukraine are now connected as well. Revisior also works with Ukrposhta (Ukrainian Post) and Ukrzaliznytsia (Ukrainian Railways).
And in Poland, residents of Zduńska Wola can evaluate the work of civil servants by filling out a questionnaire during a visit to the city hall. The survey is conducted through tablets with the help of promoters, and additional QR codes are placed on leaflets and tablets.
About investments
According to Sergiy Shapirenko, the startup has raised about $310,000. This amount does not include grants. The team received the first infusion ($85,000) from angel investors Yuriy Bykoriz and Petro Chernyshov. The startup also attracted $85,000 from an Amazon top manager.
In 2020, the team received a grant from USF – first $50,000, then another $15,000 for acceleration. Later, the company was again funded by Amazon ($25,000 to implement the solution on Amazon servers). Then it won a $70,000 grant from Poland Prize. In 2022, the startup raised another $145,000 from Lendlease. The investment was received by the European company Revisior.
A month ago, the startup completed acceleration at Berkeley SkyDeck Europe. Among 1280 applications from around the world, 20 startups were selected.
About plans and interim results
For the entire time of work in Ukraine, the startup has collected more than 4 million reviews. There are about 2.5 million unique customers who have used the service. The company plans to work in 10 countries and connect 10,000 customers by the end of 2025.
The team is currently working on improving the app so that customers can use it to process reviews. About 20 customers use this additional service now. "We want to move away from messengers, so now we are making a new version of the application that will allow customers to process feedback not in Telegram or Facebook, but to work with our solution," explains the co-founder of the company. The team also plans to officially launch the online menu module soon, so that restaurants receive a comprehensive solution.
Revisior is now in the process of signing a contract with a European vendor. Sergiy Shapirenko is in no hurry to announce the name of it. The company hopes this agreement will allow it to attract thousands of small business customers.
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