Editor’s Note: This story is part of the Kyiv Post series of profiles of information technology companies that work in Ukraine. ELEKS is a sponsor of IT Fellowship, a program that supports the Kyiv Post’s tech coverage.
ELEKS
Year founded: 1991
CEO: Andriy Krupa
Number of employees: 1,600+
Motto: “Empowering best talent, continuous growth.”
What separates you from other companies? “People-centric is probably what distinguishes us the most.”
Despite being one of the top 100 global outsourcing companies in the world, ELEKS is run like a family business.
Indeed, the company began as a father-son company when its two founders, Oleksiy Skrypnyk and his son Oleksiy Skrypnyk Jr., took on the difficult task of creating software to help newly independent Ukraine’s state-owned power companies regulate their electric systems after the fall of the Soviet Union. That system, DAKAR, is still on the market today.
Andriy Krupa, CEO of ELEKS, says this family-owned business company culture willing and capable to take on complex, present-day challenges is the lasting perception of the company, just on a different scale now.
Since its founding, ELEKS has grown to more than 1,600 employees worldwide, with 1,200 of them in Ukraine. Nearly all of ELEKS’s business now takes place outside of Ukraine.
Today the company provides custom software development services, all the way from an idea through development and design to final product deployment and support. The company works with Fortune 500 companies and large enterprises across all sectors, helping them transform their businesses digitally.
The first Fortune 500 customer came to them in 1998, right when Ukraine was experiencing a currency crisis and ELEKS was desperately in need of cash.
ELEKS programmers turned around a task in 24 hours for a stocks-trading company that hadn’t been able to figure out the issue for six months. That company is now a part of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and is one of ELEKS longest and largest customers. ELEKS has a team of 100 employees working with them.
Krupa says that from there it was all organic growth. According to him, ELEKS always wanted to be a company that could do something complex, but with people with whom you want to work and grow with and learn from.
“This people centric idea is probably what distinguishes us most,” says Krupa.
Krupa says their founder often uses their work with TAIT, a leading provider of live entertainment in the world, as an example of the company’s ability to take on extremely difficult tasks, but always with a focus on people.
ELEKS helped TAIT create the Navigator Platform, a product line of both hardware and software control systems that manages thousands of independent machinery elements of any show, combined in a single coherent system.
According to Jim Love, vice president of engineering and head of research and development at TAIT, the development of the Navigator Platform “has led us to be the leader in the industry because we have a platform no one else does.”
And Eric Grossman, chief business officer of TAIT, says that out of all the companies they partner with, ELEKS is the one they trust the most. “In some ways, (ELEKS) is part of our business now. That’s what happens after 15 years,” Grossman said.
But Krupa notes this people-centric attitude extends not only to its customers, but to their employees as well.
Retaining talent is a big priority for ELEKS and the company does so through creating opportunities for growth of a more challenging nature and by enhancing the project portfolio within the company, says Krupa.
He says they are currently working on a corporate startup incubator at ELEKS to create possibilities for senior talent that have good ideas to bring these ideas to life.
Krupa also says the company wants to keep expanding upon career opportunities for their employees to develop their talents.
He says the company is moving to be more globally distributed, sending “ELEKS investors” to go work at Fortune 500 companies abroad, hoping they will return to Ukraine with new skills and expertise.
“If you take good care of people, they will take good care of your business,” Krupa says.
