November 10, 2020

The Ukrainian Startup Fund held the 15th Pitch Day

On November 6, the Ukrainian Startup Fund held its 15th Pitch Day. The event took place online and due to quarantine was held remotely, using a service for video conferencing – Zoom. 10 startups made presentations (pitches). All of them are at the seed stage (each of them applies for state grant funding in the amount of $ 50,000).

The event began with a greeting from the CEO and partner at Startup Wise Guys Cristobal Alonso:

“Our accelerator Startup Wise Guys invested many Ukrainian startups.We are proud of each of them. They should be role models for you. First give the to key questions: why do you do startup? What problem do you want to solve? While pitching, devote yourself to this process! Don`t be afraid of making a huge amount of mistakes before you become successful. Basically, a failure is a foundation of success. So make pitch passionately, get feedback, go forward. Good luck! I hope that some of you I will see among our startups: those, which we will invest”

Sergiy Korsunsky, Ambassador of Ukraine to Japan, joined the pitch for the first time from faraway Tokyo:

“For me, cooperation with the Ukrainian Startup Fund has not only a formal and professional side, but also a personal one. In the 1990s, I worked on the State Committee on Science and Technology, where I was involved in the creation of the Ukrainian Innovation Fund. The idea of financing the latest technologies by the state on a grant basis without participation in capital has existed for a long time, but then we did not manage to make it a reality. But now we have managed to do what we wanted almost twenty years ago. Now I am heading Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Japan, the path of formation of which lay exactly through technology, science, small and medium-sized businesses, which occupy three quarters of the economy. We see perfectly well how it ended. The purpose of our cooperation with the Ukrainian Startup Fund is that the most promising Grant Program applicants will have the opportunity to gain access to Japanese investors. I am going to talk to local institutions about it in the near future and hope that next year we will receive the first applicants. I promise that while I am in the role of Ambassador here in Japan, this direction will remain one of the priorities”

The Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco Kushneruk Dmytro continued the topic about the status of Silicon Valley in time of pandemic:

“The coronavirus pandemic has radically changed life in Silicon Valley. If earlier you could go to a cafe and see Tim Cook in line, now everyone is sitting at home. Nevertheless, Ukrainian and other startups only benefited from this. If earlier the priority was for those who had access to investors face to face, now the chances are equal and access to them is the same for everyone – online. The online format does not end with conversations only. Concluding deals also takes place remotely, on average it takes three to four calls. Our Ukrainian Startup Fund, in addition to direct funding, gives startups the opportunity to evaluate their project more objectively, because here you will not be spared and will be asked the most pressing questions. And it’s useful to be prepared for foreign markets and investors”

Artem Makeev, the managing partner at the Unit School of Business, completed the solemn part and for the first time announced that one of the speaking startups, according to a voting of USB representatives, will receive a scholarship for free schooling based on the results of their pitches.

Who is the jury made up of?

Kateryna Degtyar. Chapter director at Startup Grind Kyiv.
Yurii Sereshchenko. Managing partner at Quarter Partners.
Vadym Rogovskiy. CEO and founder of Startup School Online.
Ganna Tolstanova. Head of the R&D department of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
Oleksandr Riabtsev. Founder of StartupInUA.
Felix Litvinsky. Managing director at Blackstone LaunchPad.
Oleksii Orap. CEO and founder of Youscan.

The main criteria for evaluating projects at the seed stage are: team, market, product, feasibility of financing, strategy. In each category, a maximum is 5 points (in total maximum is 25). The passing score for a recommendation to the Supervisory Board for a grant is 15 points.

The results

According to the results of the Competition Сommittee’s assessments, the following startups rating list was formed (from the highest score to the lowest):

eSalesPlatform. E-commerce platform which helps retailers to expand their businesses on global marketplaces like Amazon or eBay.
MBC Bundles & Product PACK. An application to create Bundles and Product Packages for Shopify eCommerce platform to increase average check, cross-sell, and simplify inventory of such combinations, and include them to marketing campaigns.
Saport. UBER for urgent services. We created the software that connects a client with an expert (ready to fix his problem now) in a phone call within 20 seconds. It is suitable for any service, and the integration takes a few hours.
CONTROL FLOW. Combination of hardware and software solutions for accounting and control of fluid flow. First of all, the product is focused on the fuel market. The application is synchronized with a device that provides access to remote system management. The application will allow companies to manage their own resources, detect theft and manage card limits in real time, as a result – an increase of resource efficiency and a reduction of costs by 15%.
DITA. Size and fit recommendation system for offline and online stores that can measure parameters of a human body with tailor-accuracy and match them with a pattern of the clothing item.
Biphasic+. Automatic external defibrillator is the latest development in the field of treatment of threatening cardiac events, designed for dosed electro-pulse defibrillation effect transtrakally on the patient’s heart in the treatment of acute and chronic cardiac arrhythmias and monitoring of electrocardio signal (ECS).
Environmentally friendly ion-plasma technology of black silicon for solar energy. The technology is based on a new physical effect of collective trampoline sputtering of solids, discovered by the authors in 2019, the main technical solutions are protected by a Patent of Ukraine. The high rates and low costs of environmentally friendly processes will significantly reduce the production costs of black silicon structures compared to the most efficient modern MCC technology.
TurboRapid. Compact and highly efficient gas-fired hot water boiler “TurboRapid” type, the use of which will significantly reduce the cost of generating heat for the production of heating and hot water supply, which will allow the population, industry, communities to save additional funds and improve the social, economic and environmental aspects of life in the country.
ELUPAY. A complex of Hardware and Software solutions that allows the owners of any kind of vending machines to organize the acceptance of non-cash payments (Visa, MasterCard, etc.) quickly and profitably. The consumer will be able to pay by cashless method through the application on his mobile device.
IntelSoft Technologies. We help organizations improve performance by better understanding and predicting operations, customer behavior and external environment. With this purpose in mind, we develop easy-to-use software solutions with automated advanced analytics for decision makers’ needs. This allows to embark on daily data-driven decision making with no need for data science and IT skills.