The Ukrainian Startup Fund held the 22nd Pitch Day

On March 5, the Ukrainian Startup Fund held its 22nd Pitch Day to select startups for state financing. The event took place in offline mode on the territory of the innovation park UNIT.City. 12 startups made presentations (pitches). All of them are at the pre-seed stage (each of them applies for state grant funding in the amount of $ 25,000).

The event was opened by the moderator Оlexander Pedan, TV presenter, leader of the JuniorZ movement, co-founder of the communication agency PEDAN BURO:

“Today’s participants are really lucky, because these 12 teams were selected among almost 3,000 others who also applied. Two years ago some venture funds estimated that there were not so many startups in Ukraine. They expected no more than five hundred startups. As you can see, the calculations turned out to be almost accurate and that’s great. I am sincerely glad to see such potential among Ukrainian entrepreneurs, which can grow even more.”

Dominic Piote, UNIT.City CEO, supported the startups with admonitions. He also spoke about one of the latest initiatives of the innovation park — NEST Bootcamp:

“Unit City is about innovation, Unit City is about startups and we want more of that. More startups in Ukrainian ecosystem! We want to support them to grow, to become unicorns. That`s why we decided to create NEST, a cozy place where startups can start and feel warmth, a little more safe, because creating a startup is not a safe thing to do. You should to be brave and resilient. Nest is a physical place in Unit City where startups can pitch, can stay. Moreover, there will be a bootcamp, so I invite you to apply! It` s absolutely free. We have many sponsors (Unit city is one of them). We will finish application in a few days (*final deadline 10th of March). We will select 7 startups which will be with us during NEST Bootcamp, an intensive 3-months acceleration program for advanced startups. Our great community is full of experts who are willing to share their knowledge! Join us!”

Who is the jury made up of?

• Kateryna Degtyar. Chapter director at Startup Grind Kyiv.
• Igor Rusnak. Strategic and Development Officer at OTP Bank.
• Arkadiy Vershebenyuk. Partner at BeeVentures.
• Yurii Sereshchenko. Managing partner at Quarter Partners.
• Oleksandr Riabtsev. Founder of StartupInUA.
• Maksym Beshleul. Founder and CEO at MedicalLife.
• Sergii Dovgopolyy. Managing partner at FeelGoodLabs businesses accelerator.

The main criteria for evaluating projects at the pre-seed stage are team, market, idea, the 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 12 points.

The results

This time the audience award according to a vote in the telegram channel was gained by the startup Workee.

Startups VR Inn and V-Art received a special prize from the event partner iHUB powered by NUMA in the form of three months of free use of their workplaces.

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

1. VR Inn. A VR-tech company focused on enterprise training solutions development with a proprietary VR Inn Growth platform to deliver, manage, and control training of employees. Our mission is to rebuild existing training methodologies such as video training, printed instructions, and shadowing, and deliver VR trainings that provide up to 90% of training effectiveness to such industries as automotive, heavy manufacturing, mining, and etc. Our main differentiator comparing with regular VR training companies is that we deliver training as a complete solution for different industries, instead of developing tailor-made solutions for each company. That allows us to build a product company with a variety of VR training.
2. V-Art. An ArtTech startup, an online platform to exhibit, sell and collect digital art. V-Art platform is the first multifunctional solution for art, created by using digital technologies and digitized traditional art, which exists as a file. The platform combines: 1) transparent infrastructure for digital artworks as assets: authentication, registration of provenance, transactions and sales history by using blockchain, as well as a flexible system of licenses in compliance with copyright and data security; 2) unique interactive virtual gallery spaces technology with convenient navigation, virtual chats for communication and AR mode; 3) professional social network for art market participants, where galleries, artists, collectors, dealers, curators will be able to establish professional connections for effective interaction by creating personal accounts.
3. HoldYou. An online psychological aid service. Our project is for people who want to get help from psychologist whenever and wherever, no matter where they are at the moment.
4. Symptomatical. A SaaS application that can help organizations track the health of their members (employees, students, etc.) and ensure the overall operational health of the organization preventing epidemic outbreaks.
5. Checki. Smart service of electronic receipts. Customers do not need to save cash receipts anymore. Business can lower charges on paper and fiscal registers and can get additional marketing tool.
6. Biobetter. For people who want to stay young, healthy, and productive but don’t know what steps they need to take, how to integrate this into their lifestyle, and track dynamics, Biobetter is a virtual assistant that provides blood tests-based recommendations and allows them to increase productivity, slow down the aging process, and prevent diseases.
7. My1stJob. Youth job-resource, where candidates and companies instantly find each other by target Soft Skills, a system of filters and comparisons. We were the first to use strong personal soft skills as a selection criterion: recruiter received an effective tool for determining the right candidates, among all without experience; candidate – competitive advantage among others and the choice of vacancies, where he is needed. Candidates determine their strengths with a special test that they pass BEFORE the selection of vacancies, minimizing the likelihood of distortion of results.
8. Mobiform. An online platform, which plans to become the best producer of custom-made furniture in the world. We will unite customers, sellers and producers all over the world and make custom-made furniture cheaper, faster and enjoyable with online VR constructor and full automatization of marketing and production process. Just imagine – you will wear a VR helmet and start building the kitchen by your own hands.
9. Workee. Workee makes remote work simple with machine learning-based automation focusing on freelancers, professionals, and individual entrepreneurs engaged in consultations and training. Manage personal spaces with a calendar, notes, and reminders integrated with each other. Engage with clients easier with your website, simple booking, and payments allowing onboard them automatically and track relations effectively.
10. EcoTyre. An engineering and software startup company that designed a concept of modular tires recycling line. The company enables the production of valuable raw materials for re-use in the production of new tires, road surfacing, technical rubber products, plastics, covers, building applications, etc.
11. CleanOK. An online service for instant booking of car wash. Addressed issues: queues at car washes at peak times; difficulty of search, lack of online booking; lack of customers at regular car washes; explosive growth of self-service car washes; the difficulty of keeping the booking journal. The solution is a platform for car washes that want to increase profits; and customers who do not want to stand in line and spend time on calls.
12. JURDEP. An Intelligent Workspace for Lawyers that enables both individual users and legal teams of any size to be more efficient and productive as well as effective. Its AI features allow the automation of routine processes and obtaining valuable information for decision-making in a matter of seconds. JURDEP also offers integration with external data sources including court records, well-organized storage of documents, enhanced collaboration capabilities including co-authoring, task management, comprehensive analytics and AI-empowered forecasting, both legal practice management and enterprise legal management tools. Therefore, corporate legal departments, law firms or solo practitioners will find everything they need in JURDEP.

At the USF Supervisory Board meeting, which will take place in the near future, it will be decided which startups will receive grant funding.

We remind that according to the results of the 20th Pitch Day five startups at the pre-seed stage were funded: OSBB Online, ComeBack Mobility, obimy, LineBar and MindSelf.