Ukrainian tech companies Kwambio and Petcube received the highest recognition at Investor Day Central and Eastern Europe, a conference for startups that took place in Kyiv on Oct.9-10. Overall, as many as 19 startups took home prizes that range from mentorships to up to $19,000 in cash winnings.
Petcube, the developer of a gadget that remotely connects people with their pets via a laser pointer and web camera, won $18,500 from the GTF grant fund. Its pre-order price is $179. In 2013, the gadget developer raised more than $250,000 on Kickstarter, but found itself five months behind on product delivery. The first Petcubes are scheduled to arrive at the doorsteps of fundraising campaign contributors by the end of October.
Kwambio, an online platform for creating customized three dimensional printed products, took top honors and a $19,000 prize as the event’s best startup. It provides 3D printer owners easy ways to buy and customize designer printable models.
Second place and $12,700 in the main competition went to Ecois.me. The startup analyzes household energy consumption and then singles each device out by providing usage statistics and advice. The project’s creators claim their service can help save up to 30 percent on electricity bills.
Chosen third in the startup competition to receive $6,350 was Looksery, which developed a technology to modify people’s faces in real-time when they make video calls. In addition to a mobile video chatting app, the company is looking to strike business-to-business licensing deals to provide solutions for customer service representatives.
Another startup that received about the same amount of money as Looksery is DonorUA, which won conference’s hackathon, including $7,700 to be used for receiving guidance from Borys Kaufman, whose main business includes running several hotels and two banks. Focus weekly magazine is his key media asset. DonorUA is developing an online platform that allows people to find blood donors faster. It’s also compiling a database of blood donations centers all over Ukraine.
The three runners-up at the hackathon were Volunteer Social Network, City Underground Communications Map, and Splace. The names of the former two explain their ideas in full, and the latter is a mobile app that helps to crowdfund minor infrastructure improvements like benches, trash bins, and bicycle parking spots. The three projects received subscriptions for Microsoft’s BizSpark program which provides startups with free licenses for developer tools, as well as support and training.
The Best Ukrainian Startup award complete with six months of mentoring and media support from Apex Ventures went to Zen Assets, a web application for investment portfolio management. Price and assortment comparison tool Competera was named the Best Business-to-business Startup and received 1 million ad impressions on the online marketplace All.biz.
One of the biggest Ukrainian infotainment websites, Bigmir.net, was awarded three projects in the Best Interactive Startup nomination. Photo management tool ZZ Photo received $7,700 worth in advertisement at Bigmir.net, while errand marketplace Zarabotus and hashtag marketing service Hashtago got similar prizes of $3,900 and $1,900 worth of advertising, respectively.
Microsoft Ukraine awarded IDCEE the Best Cloud Startup prize, which came with a BizSpark Plus program subscription, effectively receiving $60,000 to use on Microsoft Azure cloud platform over the following year. The winner in this nomination was FlyElephant, a cloud marketplace for data aggregation and high-performance computing.
In addition to FlyElephant, Microsoft Ukraine chose two startups that will work in its offices for a month and receive practical recommendations, mentoring and technical consultations from company experts. The chosen teams were cloud e-payment platform Kaznachey and hotel booking service GoodHotels.
The winner of the two-minute pitch contest, Startup Toaster, was VOX, one of the most popular audio players for the OS X, which recently launched a private music cloud service. VOX received a full discount on finding one developer from Ukrainian recruitment service djinni.co.
The runners-up were help desk software provider Helprace and gesture-recognition device Force. They were given the possibility to showcase their projects at Balkan Venture Forum, bypassing the selection procedure and a Nokia Lumia 820 development kit, respectively.
Andrii Degeler is the Kyiv Post’s information technology reporting fellow. Degeler has been covering the IT business in Ukraine and internationally since 2009. His fellowship is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe. He can be reached on Twitter (@shlema) or [email protected].
