During the first six month of 2015, 34 Ukrainian start-ups attracted venture investments equal to $11 mln, according to the report of UVCA and UAngel business angels community.
There is no separate data for the first six month of 2014, but during whole last year was attracted about $22 mln of venture investments. According to Yanika Merilo, managing director of UVCA, the current result can be estimated as fairly good.
In the report UVCA and UAngel took into account deals of more than $30 thous, in which the participators were business angels, funds, incubators and accelerators. Sum of 12 deals, out of 34 still remains unrevealed, but altogether deals were estimated at $700 thous.
The biggest investor in Ukrainian start-ups during the first six month was ‘’ukrainian SMRK fund. The fund invested $1,3 mln in mobile restaurant preorder service Settle, and then $1 mln in hardware –data transmitters and “smart home” safety systems developer Ajax Systems.
Among the companies, the first place in the amount of investments was taken by Clickky project from Odessa. In April iTech Capital fund invested $2 mln in this start-up. Clickky is engaged in mobile apps promotion and monetized audience attraction, and became one of the best platforms in the whole Eastern Europe.
Almost half as much was attracted by Petcube start-up for their robot for pets. In the first quarter of 2015 start-up raised the seed round of $1,1 mln from Almaz Capital and AVentures Capital.Ukrainian start-up of alternate reality Augmented Pixels raised $1 mln from Californian The Hive fund.
As AVentures Capital managing partner Evgeniy Sysoyev has noted, a few Ukrainian companies raised seven-digit sums during the first six month of 2015 from American investors, and then established a new office in USA.
According to Denis Dovgopolyi, the managing partner of GrowthUP Group, the crisis has a positive influence on the activity of technological companies. Currently, crisis in Ukraine aligned with growth of industry on the global market, and entrepreneurs hastened to take advantage of this unique situation.
Dovgopolyi thinks that the next step will be investors` activation. The interest of international investors gradually increases. In exchange, Yanika Merilo gives less promising forecasts for 2015. According to her, on the background of current economic situation and problems in the eastern part of the country, it would be hard to keep the present level of investment, and we should only hope for its growth.
