Top 8 Ukrainian startups in 2022: Who managed to attract the largest amount of investment
Domestic founders closed 54 deals in the war year
2022 was a very hard year for Ukrainian startups, as well as for the whole business. However, despite the war, many domestic projects managed to attract investment. According to Mind estimates, 54 deals were recorded on the market. The amount of funding for 16 of them has not yet been disclosed. More than $724.4 million was invested in the remaining 38 startups. However, with a nuance: $500 million of this amount was invested in one project. And most startups "raised" up to $1 million. Therefore, we predictably have a decline compared to last year. Then domestic teams broke the record and received investments totalling $2.347 billion.
For the annual rating, Mind selected startups that overcame the "bar" of $5 million. There were few such projects: only eight teams passed the milestone. We included in the rating and summarised the investments of only the companies with teams/offices in Ukraine and our compatriots among the founders. Therefore, projects that do not have teams in our country were left behind. For example, Eclypsium (attracted $25 million), Atlant 3D Nanosystems ($15 million), and Aegiq ($4.8 million).
Curious enough, four places in the top 8 were taken by crypto startups this year. Despite the "crypto winter" – a rapid collapse in this industry, they managed to catch the "wave."
Earlier, Mind wrote about our startups’ investment adventures in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017.
8th place: Utorg
Company's Kyiv office
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $5 million
Year of creation: 2020
Founders: Artem Barannyk, Daniel Stolberg, Yevgen Petrakov
Offices: Kyiv
It is a crypto exchanger with simple functionality. The user enters the amount in fiat currency (hryvnia, dollars, euros), specifies the name of the crypto wallet, and receives crypto on it. The fee is 6.5%.
There are many such projects on the market. The developers believe that customers choose their product because it is fast and easy to use. According to Utorg, millions of people from almost 200 countries have already used this crypto exchange. Forbes provides more "substantive" statistics: from May 2021 to May 2022, the startup has received $20 million in revenue from 250,000 users.
Until this year, the startup was developing on its own funds. In September 2022, the team attracted outside investment for the first time. American Dragonfly and Ukrainian Hypra and TA Ventures invested in Utorg. The raised $5 million will be used to develop a decentralised application and promote it worldwide: the team receives digital asset exchange provider licences in the UK, Canada, UAE, Singapore, Thailand, etc.
7th place: Salto X
Amount of attracted investments in 2022: 5.2 million euros
Year of creation: 2021
Founders: Ragnar and Elisa Sass, Krists Avots, Tetiana Tchaikovska
Offices: Kyiv, Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia)
Number of employees: about 20
This is another crypto startup. It was created at the end of last year by Ragnar Sass, co-founder of the Estonian unicorn Pipedrive Ragnar Sass and Tetiana Tchaikovska, head of the Kyiv coworking LIFT99. The team is developing a Web3 alternative to stock options.
"Most startup founders know the pain of distributing capital. Different laws in different jurisdictions, tax, and employment rules. And the pain only intensifies when founders try to give a share to non-employees: contractors, advisors, the public, etc." the founders explain and assure that Salto X solves this problem.
Thus, the product replaces traditional employee stock option programmes with tokens through a smart contract. It allows reducing the cost of legal registration regardless of jurisdiction and simplifies the issuance of company shares for remote or contract employees.
The startup attracted its first investment in July this year. The funds were invested by ByFounders, Blockwall, Box Group, 3Commas, and several angels. The investments were used to scale the product in different jurisdictions and expand the team in Ukraine. In autumn, the Salto X office was opened in our country.
6th place: Fintech Farm
Amount of attracted investments in 2022: $7.4 million
Year of creation: 2021
Founders: Dmytro Dubilet, Oleksandr Vitiaz, Mykola Bezkrovny
Offices: Kyiv, Dnipro
Number of employees: over 70
It is a fintech company that develops platforms for launching neobanks in different countries of the world. Last year, Fintech Farm opened its first project – Leobank in Azerbaijan and planned to expand to Africa and Asia. For this purpose, in January 2022, it raised $7.4 million from Flyer One Ventures, Solid, Jiji (part of the Genesis group), TA Ventures, u.ventures, and AVentures Capital.
So far, despite the war, the company has managed to move into two markets. In 2022, the team launched Liobank in Vietnam and Fibo in Nigeria. For expansion, Fintech Farm attracts a local partner bank, with which it shares the business 50/50.
5th place: Spin Technology (formerly Spinbackup)
Company's Kyiv office
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $16 million
Year of creation: 2013
Founders: Dmytro Dontsov
Offices: Kyiv, Odesa, Los Angeles (USA), Palo Alto (USA)
Number of employees: over 80
A startup in cybersecurity. The team has developed a kind of antivirus for third-party SaaS services. The software recognises threats on different platforms: Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, etc.
The platform contains four components: ransomware monitoring and response, application risk assessment, data leakage prevention, backup, and recovery. Spin has over 1600 customers: Toyota, OFS, Utibrain, Autodoc, Miller, etc.
In August, Spin raised $16 million from Blueprint Equity, Santa Barbara Venture Partners, and Blu Venture Investors. The company was valued at $55 million. The funds were used for further expansion, expanding services, increasing marketing, sales and engineering teams.
4th place: Preply
Company's Kyiv office
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $50 million
Year of creation: 2012
Founders: Sergiy Lukyanov, Dmytro Voloshyn, Kyrylo Bigai
Offices: Kyiv, Barcelona (Spain), New York (USA)
Number of employees: over 400
A platform for finding tutors to help you learn a foreign language. Preply has over 49,000 teachers from 185 countries and about 50 languages to choose from. Since its launch, students have signed up for more than 16 million lessons.
In July, the company raised $50 million in a Series C round from Owl Ventures, Diligent Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Educapital, Evli Growth Partners, Przemysław Gacek, Swisscom Ventures, and Orbit Capital. The team used the funds to grow in the US and Europe, polishing the search technology based on artificial intelligence.
3rd place: AirSlate (formerly PDFfiller)
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $51.5 million
Year of creation: 2008
Founders: Vadym Yasynovsky, Borys Shakhnovych
Offices: Kyiv, Boston (USA), Wrocław (Poland), st. petersburg (russia)
Number of employees: over 900, most of them in the Kyiv office
SaaS service for workflow automation without code. The platform contains solutions for the development, integration, and automation of workflow from the cloud. AirSlate has about 87 million users and 700,000 customers worldwide. Among them – BillingTree, Ground Floor, Tutor Perini, Colliers, FirstData, GoFundme, etc.
In June, the company raised $51.5 million in a Series C round from G Squared UiPath Ventures. It became a unicorn: its valuation exceeded $1.25 billion. Later, AirSlate bought DocHub, a document signing platform, with almost 83 million users. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
In the first days of the full-scale war, AirSlate blocked its russian customers, started donating to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and placed a banner on its website to raise funds to support Ukraine.
At the same time, the company did not close its russian representative office, SPB FILER LLC, despite numerous requests from employees of the Ukrainian office.
2nd place: Unstoppable Domains
Company's Kyiv office
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $65 million
Year of creation: 2018
Founders: Americans Brad Kam, Matthew Gould, Braden Pezeshki, and Ukrainian Bogdan Gusev
Offices: San Francisco (USA), Kyiv
Number of employees: over 150
Another crypto startup. The team creates short NFT domains to which the user can bind the addresses of all their crypto wallets. Why? Each wallet consists of more than 30 random characters. It is very difficult to remember them, unlike a simple domain. The startup sells its "creations" starting from $5 per domain. The user gets it in his lifetime property. Unstoppable Domains has already sold more than 2.5 million domains.
Attracting funding in July this year, the startup became the second Ukrainian unicorn with a valuation of $1 billion, which managed to gain this "status" in wartime. Despite the "crypto winter", many foundations believed in the project and invested in it: Pantera Capital, Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures, Spartan Group, OKX Blockdream Ventures, Polygon, CoinDCX, CoinGecko, We3 syndicate, Rainfall Capital, Broadhaven, El Ventures, Hardyaka, Sound Media Ventures, as well as previous investors Boost VC and Draper Associates.
1st place: Near Protocol
The amount of attracted investments in 2022: $500 million
Year of creation: 2018
Founders: Ilya Polosukhin, Oleksandr Skidanov
Offices: Lisbon (Portugal), part of the team is in Ukraine
The leader of this year was a startup from, what a surprise, the crypto industry. The company has launched a blockchain platform that helps developers create decentralised services (dapps). NEAR claims that their product is faster, easier to use, and cheaper than competitors.
Near processes more than 100,000 transactions per second, while Ethereum – 15, Bitcoin – 5-7, and Ukrainian Solana – 3000. About 300 applications (Aurora, Buroww, Ref Finance, etc.) with more than 200,000 users worldwide already work on the NEAR platform. The company earns on transaction fees (a few cents for each). The team assures that the price is 10,000 times lower than in Ethereum. Also, app owners pay Near for data storage.
The company has attracted investments twice this year. The first time in January – $150 million from Three Arrows Capital, Dragonfly Capital, a16z, Mechanism Capital, and others. The second time in April – already $350 million from Tiger Global, Republic Capital, Hashed, FTX Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, and other investors. The money was used to expand regional offices and launch new projects in Web3. In September, the company announced the launch of its $100 million fund for the development of Web3 and its first investment in Ukrainian startup Datrics. It develops a no-code platform that allows companies to analyse high-level data without involving programmers. The money the deal was done for was not disclosed.
If you have read this article to the end, we hope that means it was useful for you.
We work to ensure that our journalistic and analytical work is of high quality, and we strive to perform it as competently as possible. This also requires financial independence. Support us for only UAH 196 per month.
Become a Mind subscriber for just USD 5 per month and support the development of independent business journalism!
You can unsubscribe at any time in your LIQPAY account or by sending us an email: [email protected]
