Every year Ukrainian business beginners graduate from the Norwegian Young Entrepreneurs program with valuable new skills and new contacts to help achieve their dreams.
The program was founded by the Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, or NUCC, in 2015, with the aim of bringing together entrepreneurs from both countries to increase investment and trade.
Over the last four years, 76 Ukrainians and Norwegians have taken part in the educational program. And this year, NUCC looks forward to teaching 20 more participants.
The program includes two one-week sessions — one held in Ukraine and one in Norway. During the sessions, participants attend lectures, visit various enterprises, and meet civic activists and officials specializing in business ethics, effective corporate governance, and anti-corruption.
The participants also work in groups divided by the fields they work in, such as IT, agriculture, architecture, and more. The groups are supposed to look for trade and cooperation opportunities and find ways to exploit them.
Some of them continue to develop these business ideas after the program is over.
Success stories
Yurii Kulynych, 30, was selected for Young Entrepreneurs in 2016, and led his group. Back then, Kulynych came up with the idea of supplying Norwegian companies producing fish food with the protein products made in Ukraine.
“It’s an export of Ukrainian agriculture — the key segment of Ukrainian and Norwegian (trade),” Kulynych told the Kyiv Post.
Kulynych has been teaching finance at Kyiv’s National University of Food Technology since 2011, and says he has always been interested in the agricultural business. During the NUCC program he realized that there were opportunities to start such a business himself.
Kulynych says he learned that an idea alone is worthless — it’s the realization of the idea that matters.
“And (the program) gave me an impetus to start the realization of my idea,” he said.
He also found it useful working in a group as well as leading and motivating it.
Today Kulynych continues teaching finance and studies agri-food at the Kyiv Mohyla Business School as he continues to develop his protein supply business.
He is now looking into expanding the number of products he exports, and wants to open a branch of the Norwegian company he cooperates with.
Expanding production
Unlike Kulynych, Yaryna Bakhovska had already started working on her business when she applied to participate in the Young Entrepreneurs program.
Bakhovska, 27, and her husband Roman, 31, founded a prefabricated homes company called Cosmos Prefab in 2016 and wanted to enter the Norwegian and other Scandinavian markets. Soon they found out about the NUCC’s program and saw it as a great opportunity to try out their business concept.
Bakhovska says that the program’s advantage is that it’s not only about education, but that it gives participants a chance to explore the Norwegian market and meet its players.
“There was an opportunity to find ways to cooperate,” Bakhovska said.
The businesswoman says that the NUCC was actively engaged in helping their company develop by setting up meetings with potential business partners.
“It was a great example of how such programs should be organized — they should be helpful in a practical way,” Bakhovska said.
Even after the program was over, the NUCC continued providing support for Cosmos Prefab: they assisted in organizing a tour for the company’s employees around the plants of a Norwegian-Estonian company Pro-nor Baltics producing prefabricated houses.
Bakhovska says that the prefabricated house industry is booming in Norway, so it was useful to visit enterprises to see how they design and manufacture products.
Cosmos Prefab participated in the program in 2017, and since then has set up all of the stages of their production process. They have produced two module houses so far, and are currently working on constructing four more prefabricated homes.
Today Cosmos Prefab offers two house designs: the Spacecraft model for living, and the Camp model for recreation.
Apart from that, Bakhovska’s company has recently received invitations from investors in Norway and the United States. They are currently negotiating about creating a chain of module houses located in attractive natural settings.
Only a year after taking their first steps in business, Cosmos Prefab has become an example to follow.
In the summer of 2018, the Young Entrepreneurs program brought its new participants to visit one of the company’s module houses, which is based in Maidan village in Lviv Oblast.
The participants got to check Cosmos Prefab’s houses, as well as talk to the enterprise’s staff.
Bakhovska says they were happy to share their experience of developing from a concept to a company over a year.
“There’s no need to be afraid, you just need to work hard on your idea,” Bakhovska said.
The Norwegian-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce will soon start to accept applications for the 2019 Young Entrepreneurs program. Check for updates and apply online at www.nucc.no.
