On July 15, 2021 Sigma Software together with the Embassy of Ukraine in the UK, TheCityUK, and the London Stock Exchange held the first UK-Ukraine Fintech Summit. The main objective was to inform a British audience about the potential of the Ukrainian fintech industry. As well as finding common ground for future partnerships. Government representatives, leading fintech companies and industry leaders from the two countries attended the summit.
During the summit, 10 selected Ukrainian startups presented their products to British partners. That was with the support of global startup platform TiE London, business incubator Sigma Software Labs, the UTEW Tech Tribe community, Ukrainian Startup Fund and the IT Ukraine Association. It was a great opportunity for young Ukrainian businesses to present themselves to the UK market. As well as getting on the radar of investors and journalists.
At the end of the showcase, TiE London selected what they considered to be two of the best teams: upSWOT and GoSolo. TiE London granted them special memberships to their organisation. This will enable the startups to participate in mentorship programmes, attend exclusive events and meet successful entrepreneurs in London.
In this article, we briefly describe the projects and the future plans of these 10 startups.
Datrics
Datrics.ai is developing an analytics and machine learning product for the fintech sector. What makes it special is that the tool offered by Anton Vaisburd and the team does not require any special code to be written. This greatly simplifies and speeds up the work of business analysts and allows them to automate many processes.
In early 2021, Datrics.ai became a member of the legendary Y Combinator business incubator. The company also recently closed an additional seed round. The startup’s immediate goals are to become a major analytics tool, to build their own community, and to scale into new markets.
Finmap
Finmap provides online financial accounting services for entrepreneurs and SMEs. The startup was founded in 2019 by two friends, Ivan Kaunov and Oleksandr Solovei. In 2021, the project was relaunched with the participation of Dmytro Dubilet, one of the co-founders of Monobank, Ukraine’s first fully digital bank.
As a result, Finmap has become simpler and more user-friendly and has already attracted further investment from investment company BRISE Capital, the European startup accelerator Startup Wise Guys, Sigma Software Labs and the Inspirium Laboratories fund. The funds will go towards scaling the project and doubling the staff to 60 by the end of 2021. Finmap is also working on a global partnership with Visa.
upSWOT
upSWOT is another fintech platform for small and medium-sized businesses that allows banks to quickly get an analytical overview of a company’s financial situation. The startup was founded by Dmytro Norenko, Andriy Davidchuk, Yaroslav Yaroslavskyy and Dmytro Sivolap in 2019. Today, the company has 45 employees.
Last November, upSWOT raised $4.3m in investments. A wide array of investors backed the startup. That included Common Ocean, SpeedUp Group, First Southern National Bank, Independent Community Bankers of America and a number of angel investors. upSWOT is also a partner product of Sigma Software Group, which the Swedish-Ukrainian company sells to its customers.
BackCash
BackCash is a young startup that solves the problem of debt recovery by incorporating gamification elements. This non-trivial approach is used to make the debt recovery process as comfortable and psychologically effective as possible.
Today, the app is available for free on iOS and Android. The team’s immediate plans include adding paid integration and premium subscription features, as well as raising investment and launching a full-fledged product in 2022.
Yotta Pay
British-Ukrainian startup Yotta Pay provides a low-cost mobile payment solution. The company offers three subscription options: Business, Friends and Family, and Charity.
A special feature of the app is that transactions are very fast and cost next to nothing. It is possible to pay for services and make transfers using QR codes, built-in widgets, and directly from bank accounts.
GoSolo
GoSolo is another young British-Ukrainian organisation. It allows you to register a company, open a business bank account and start trading in a few clicks. At the moment, the startup, whose founder is Dmytro Pimakhov, is at an early stage of its development.
Nonetheless, 1,500 users have registered to the service’s demo version. GoSolo‘s plans for 2021 are to reach product market fit and attract at least 5,000 revenue-generating users. The team also plans to develop its community and launch apps on iOS and Android.
Corefy
Corefy is a Ukrainian payment management platform that helps its clients scale into new markets. In 2021, the company passed the mark of 100 integrations and became one of the top five payment hubs in Europe. According to Corefy CEO Denys Kirichenko, the company has already processed more than 14 million payments this year, which is already double the number it processed in 2020. In addition, the company is working on 26 new integrations.
The company’s key goal, however, is to unite all existing and future payments into one big hub.
nect WORLD
nect World is a Kyiv-based startup that developed the nect MODEM 4G modem. The device connects to 4G, 3G and 2G networks anywhere in the world and can distribute Internet to ten other devices simultaneously.
In April 2020, the startup submitted its project to the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, where the creators’ goal was to raise $30,000. As a result, the required amount was raised in just 5 days, and the project raised over $352,000 in total. Last year, nect World also made it into the US accelerator Boomtown Accelerators, where it received a further $35,000 in funding in exchange for a 7% stake in the company.
KYC PAY
KYC PAY is building an innovative marketplace platform for financial services. The company integrates digital services from various financial and legal providers in one place. It helps businesses gain direct access to banks, financial and merchant providers.
To date, the company already has more than 200 clients.
Global Ledger
Global Ledger is a blockchain startup that enables banks, fintechs and crypto startups to comply with mandatory regulations for crypto-assets. Regulators and law enforcement agencies can use Global Ledger‘s technology to oversee financial institutions in line with existing guidelines and investigate cybercrime.
The mission of Alex Fisun‘s team is to drive adoption of crypto-assets through technological innovation and compliance with standards and regulations.