More than five years ago, Ukraine had barely a few dozen technology companies.
But that didn't stop four Odesa-based programmers from creating mobile applications that millions of people around the globe now use daily.
Their company, Readdle, formed three days after Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007 as a producer of mobile iOS applications – focused on time management and making documents, books, images and PDF files easier to read, edit and share. Now it boasts over 45 million downloads of its eight applications.
In 2009, Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walter Mossberg listed Readdle Docs as one of his “favorite apps that make the iPhone worth the price.”
With 85 employees based primarily in Odesa and Kyiv, Readdle focuses on the American market, which accounts for 45 percent of its business. Another 30 percent comes from European Union countries.
The founding members of the company, friends who graduated from the Odesa Mechnykov University, bought their first iPhone shortly after its release and figured it was useless for reading books.
For its first year, Readdle existed as a web service through which one could upload and read a PDF book on an iPhone. A few months before the App Store was to be launched in the summer of 2008, Igor Zhadanov, Readdle’s chief executive officer, received a promising offer from one of his former colleagues who worked for Apple at that time.
“In short, it sounded simple and huge – ‘we want you to be in our App Store,’” said Denys Zhadanov, Igor’s brother and the head of marketing at Readdle.
Readdle’s team started working day and night. Within four months of intense coding, they presented Readdle Docs, a $14.99 file manager for storing and opening any file extensions on an iPhone, including Microsoft Office files, PDFs, images and videos. It became a part of the package of 500 apps available on the first App Store version on July 10, 2008. Now the app is called Documents 5 and is free to download.
“The app was sold widely and that meant it was useful for people, as they would not spend their money for nothing. That was in fact our primary intention – to make value, to make people’s lives easier, with smartphones having more instruments to arrange one’s daily schedule,” Denys Zhadanov said.
Shortly after, they created Scanner Pro, a text recognizer that now has 7 million downloads and the reputation as a product leader. With a price tag of $2.99, the app makes the phone work like a real scanner.
“After Scanner Pro was featured by Apple as App of the Week in early 2014, almost everyone in the U.S. knew about us,” Denys Zhadanov said. “So once at a bar, when I told a guy that Scanner Pro is made by us, he told me ‘No way! Did you guys really make it? I have it on my home screen, let me shake your hand.’”
Now three of Readdle’s apps – Documents, Scanner Pro and PDF Expert 5 – are constantly rotated as pre-installed items on mobile demonstration devices in Apple’s retail stores in the U.S., the U.K and other major countries where Apple’s official retail stores are located.
The company declined to provide revenue figures, however, since “it’s not as big as we would like it to be,” said Denys Zhadanov. Readdle has eight million active users monthly, with over a million average monthly downloads.
Readdle’s recent apps include options to edit PDF documents, managing one’s calendar and emails.
Its latest creation, released last year, was Fluix, a document management program that is also usable on iPads. The soft – ware offers a “potential opportunity to build a new business,” Denys Shadanov said. Enterprises are its target audience, but versions are available for individual and group document management. The price ranges from $5 to $20 per user, depending on the service package. Over 300 companies worldwide are currently using it, including Siemens, Pandora, BMW, Yamaha, and Henry Schein.
Ian Robinson, a tech expert from the U.K., has all the Readdle apps. “I’ve bought and tried all the other popular PDF apps for the iPad and iPhone. They all pale in comparison to Readdle’s offerings. Either the user interface is cluttered and hard to use, or the app is slow. PDF is the lingua franca for document exchange and Readdle’s applications on iOS make everyone a fluent speaker,” he said.
Readdle’s success is a rare case of a
Ukrainian product being widely accepted.
Without any investment or permanent
presence in the Silicon Valley, the
heart of the global tech industry, its products
are in demand. So far, the team plans
to stay in Odesa.
“It is always great to visit the Valley
several times a year to get new connections,
absorb inspiration, ideas and
entrepreneurial spirit, but then (we) return
to Odesa for the real work,” Denys
Zhadanov said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Looksery, and SoftServe.
