iHUB is a network of innovations and entrepreneurship centers, formed in 2012, with financial help from the Norwegian government.
The Norwegian government spends $40 million annually on different projects that aim to help Ukrainian society, government and entrepreneurship to develop. iHUB is just one of the many.
Since iHUB acts partially as a business incubator and a co-working space, it gives working spots to tech startup teams it selects. It also organizes workshops, master classes, conferences and networking events, as well as connecting residents with the investment funds’ representatives, angel investors and serial entrepreneurs.
Only in Kyiv, iHUB started working last November. Now it hosts more than 100 residents in Kyiv and 22 in Chernihiv.
It pays taxes as a private entity for all the money it earns on its services. “iHUB is a brand, while Seed Forum stands behind it juridically,” Dimitri Podoliev, the co-founder and managing partner at iHUB, explains.
Seed Forum Ukraine Foundation, where Podoliev also takes a leading role as a co-founder and a chairman, is being funded by the Norwegian government, too. It is a part of the global Seed Forum network of non-profit organizations and national representative offices in 45 countries around the world.
Seed Forum’s investor and startup pitching conferences, where the leading tech experts from Ukraine and Norway are invited, are hosted by iHUB.
“Whatever we earn above our organizational costs, is paid in bonuses to the employees or granted on the new projects we do. Money goes on the staff salaries and administrative expenditures. We cannot take iHUB’s profit for our own good, nor take it out of Ukraine,” says Podoliev.
iHUB occupies buildings granted by city councils for free.
Podoliev says that new iHUB offices will open in 2016 in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia. “These cities were willing to host such projects. Besides, they have very active IT ecosystems and progressive city councils and city administrations,” Podoliev says.
In Lviv, Mayor Andriy Sadovy was supportive.
But in order to get a space for free from the city council, Podoliev says, it took iHUB’s team four months to present the project to all local city council members and reassure them that the project is politically neutral.
“Lviv was very important for us and we had to talk to all local council representatives to assure them in our positive goals,” Podoliev says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum , FISON and SoftServe.
