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September 27, 2021

The Ukrainian Startup Fund held the 31st Pitch Day

On September 24, the Ukrainian Startup Fund held its 31st Pitch Day to select startups for state financing. The event took place in offline mode on the territory of the coworking hub Peremoga Space. 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).

InVenture, a specialized business publishing house of the investment market, joined as an event’s media partner.

The event was opened by Lukasz Wawak, project manager of the Polish-Ukrainian Startup Bridge, who flew from Poland specifically for this meeting to talk about their opportunities for Ukrainian startups and sign a memorandum on the beginning of official cooperation with our Fund:

“We want to open the Polish market for Ukrainian startups. Poland will definitely be interesting for teams because we are a window to the European Union, which allows us to gain new opportunities for scaling and access to capital. Ukraine, in turn, is interesting to Poland as a powerful IT hub in Central and Eastern Europe, which cannot be ignored.”

Who is the jury made up of?

  • Arkadiy Vershebenyuk. Partner at BeeVentures.
  • Andriy Zaikin. CEO and founder of YEP.
  • Andrii Gulyi. Head of analytics at INDAX.
  • Roman Kirigetov. Co-founder & CEO FlashBeats, founder of Kabanchik and Crafta.
  • Mykhailo Khaletskyi. Credit Analyst at SEB AB.
  • Vadym Rogovskiy. CEO and founder of Startup School Online.
  • Yurii Sereshchenko. Managing partner at Quarter Partners.

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 Learn Azure.

The teams FinPulse, SmartZavod, and InputSoft received a special prize from UNIT.City 3 months of free access to the modern coworking NEST, which is located on the territory of the innovation park + its infrastructure.

Startups FinPulse and RiseMe received a special prize from the event partner iHUB 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. SmartZavod. Hardware and SAAS that fully automates and simplifies the prototyping process for Hardware Startups and R&D departments (Kyiv).
  2. Innstoria. Makes it possible to create a full-fledged website with products, categories, a basket, and an online order option in just 40 seconds, using a page on Instagram (Kyiv).
  3. MATHEMA. An online math school for K-12 (Kyiv).
  4. InputSoft. SaaS platform for optimizing the utilization of human and technical resources in airports (Kyiv).
  5. RiseMe. Creates personalized soundscapes, to help you focus (Lviv).
  6. SKIDS. A mobile app with animated books for children, that will instill their love of reading and studying (Lviv).
  7. Habits Academy. An online community for new habits setting with coaching support, chatbot-helper, and gamification (Kyiv).
  8. ZeroTolerance. A complete technological and legal toolkit built to manage all your AML requirements (Kyiv).
  9. Codi. A mobile application that teaches game programming (Kyiv).
  10. FinPulse. Smart mobile dashboard for monitoring and analyzing key indicators of small and medium businesses (Kyiv).
  11. Learn Azure. A service to prepare for Microsoft Azure certification (Kyiv).
  12. Projectium. A platform where founders build a community around projects (Kyiv).

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 29th Pitch Day 5 startups were funded: The Great Catalog, Real Talk Sport, Elai, MAGBULB, and IDvizer.

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