On January 28, the Ukrainian Startup Fund held its 36th Pitch Day to select startups for state financing. 10 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 investment partners of the event became TA Ventures, ICLUB, Flyer One Ventures, JKR Investment Group, BRISE Capital, WNISEF, Digital Future, Sigma Software Labs, and SID Venture Partners.
Media partners — InVenture, TechUkraine, SPEKA, and Vector.
The event was also supported by UNIT.City, iHUB, and Httpool.
Who is the jury made up of?
- Andriy Zaikin. CEO and founder of YEP.
- Andrii Gulyi. Head of analytics at INDAX.
- Mykhailo Khaletskyi. Credit Analyst at SEB AB.
- Vadym Rogovskiy. CEO and founder of Startup School Online.
- Maksym Beshleul. CEO Skylock Ukraine.
- Kateryna Degtyar. Chapter director at Startup Grind Kyiv.
- Arkadiy Vershebenyuk. Partner at JKR Investment Group.
The main criteria for evaluating projects at the pre-seed stage are team, market, idea, the feasibility of financing, and 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
According to the results of the Competition Сommittee’s assessments, the following startups rating list was formed (from the highest score to the lowest):
- Fleur Health. Helps you to care about your parents. A solution combines a smart saliva sensor, deep machine learning, and sophisticated predictive analytics (Kharkiv).
- Zeeon. A metaverse for public learning and co-working. When Zoom meets Sims (Kyiv).
- Junior F. Linkedin for juniors. An application that can help juniors to create their own profile, to learn football techniques through video lessons, to upload their achievements and to search football schools, and to get in touch with scouts of professional clubs (Kyiv).
- Sensorium. A mobile application for primary school children to study STEAM disciplines. The platform combines the best educational technologies – a digital laboratory with sensors, laboratory equipment, and multimedia content to give children the opportunity to explore the world around them in practice, conducting research in class or at home (Kyiv).
- Truck Ready. A freight transportation marketplace that allows truckers (carriers) to set up an area of interest receive notifications about better offers and even listen to them like a voicemail when they are driving (Poltava).
- Native. A novel format for learning languages (Kyiv).
- EXTRPRIZE. Turning SCG into high-margin coffee extracts & by-products with an innovative tech of cryo extraction (Kyiv).
- Odbord. An online platform for renting offline advertising and purchasing advertising materials (Lviv).
- Sex Education UA. Sex education and culture in Ukraine. An educational platform that combines courses for children, their parents, and courses 18+ (Lviv).
- Better practice (stimulus and education). The educational platform for the exchange and sale of high-quality teaching material in the context of education reform will provide physical education teachers with a methodological and didactic basis for the practical implementation of new training modules (Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia).
At the USF Supervisory Board meeting, which will take place in the near future, it will be decided which startups will receive grant funding.
Special prizes
This time the audience award according to a vote in the telegram channel was gained by the startup Sex Education UA.
Three months in the newest coworking space NEST on the territory of the innovation park UNIT.City plus access to its infrastructure were awarded to the startup’s Zeeon and EXTRPRIZE.
Three months of free use of workplaces in iHUB were awarded to the startup’s Zeeon, EXTRPRIZE, and Sensorium.
Certificates for a free consultation on the strategy of scaling up business on media platforms from Httpool were awarded to the startup’s Fleur Health and Zeeon.
Mentoring sessions with the investment experts from JKR Investment Group were awarded to the startup’s Fleur Health and Zeeon.
Mentoring sessions with the investment experts from Flyer One Ventures were awarded to the startup’s Fleur Health, Zeeon, and Junior F.
We remind that according to the results of the 34th and 35th PITCH DAY 11 startups were funded: Alter Ego, Fintellect, Drill, EmployFox, Vgreen, MISU, AR Warriors, AssayMe, Recoshelf, BloggerMall, and Advicera.