Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs in UK face uncertainty amid pandemic

Ukrainian fintech journalist and publisher Kate Shcheglova-Goldfinch calls herself a “global person.”

She used to live between Kyiv and London, flying back and forth and visiting conferences across the world.

Shcheglova was in Kyiv when Ukraine closed its borders and canceled international flights on March 15 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Now, she has to adjust to a more settled life in locked-down Kyiv, her hometown.

Many Ukrainians have found themselves in a similar situation, caught in between the U.K. and Ukraine amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them stayed in Britain – working from home, relying on aid from the local government – while others were forced to return to Ukraine, leaving families and businesses they’ve built abroad.

“When people realized that it will last longer, they started looking for different options to survive in the new reality,” Shcheglova told the Kyiv Post.

Tale of two cities

While other European countries were closing borders and enforcing strict quarantine rules, the British enjoyed comparative leeway, as the government hoped to build herd immunity among the population.

But as the number of coronavirus cases in the U.K. began to climb steeply and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock both contracted COVID-19, the government tightened its containment measures.

When Ukraine and then the U.K. announced the lockdowns, Shcheglova and her partner, who remained in Britain, started living their life online. Shcheglova had to stay in Ukraine working on another fintech project.

For Shcheglova, it was a big challenge. In 2008, she founded a magazine called Future, which focuses on digital economy and fintech, and has been publishing it for almost 12 years.

But the restrictions on movement imposed by many countries to curb the spread of COVID-19 make it impossible for her to travel, attend networking events to get exclusive news that, she said, are the core of her magazine. She now participates in online conferences, but it cannot substitute the real-life experience.

Outside of work, Shcheglova’s personal life was disrupted by the travel ban. She and her partner are in different countries. To erase the distance, Shcheglova’s partner sends her pictures of their neighborhood or records birds singing in their favorite park.

To pass the time at the quarantine in Kyiv, Shcheglova, an ardent the Beatles fan, is teaching her friends rock’n’roll and the British culture online.

“For me, it is like having a window on Britain,” Shcheglova said.

Business interrupted

Like everywhere in the world, the economic consequences of the lockdown raise many concerns in the U.K., especially for the local service sector. It showed no growth between January and February and hit an all-time low in March 2020.

To keep small- and medium-sized enterprises afloat, the U.K. has introduced a supporting package of loans and grants.

But for those Ukrainians who have just started their enterprises in Britain and have no tax records for the past year, accessing this help is nearly impossible, Misha Rogalskiy, the co-founder of British banking app Koto, told the Kyiv Post.

Rogalskiy, who is also a co-founder of Ukrainian mobile-only bank Monobank, planned to introduce its English-style fintech product Koto in the U.K. in April, but had to postpone a full-scale launch because of the quarantine.

In Britain, attracted by favorable banking regulations, Rogalskiy and his team expected to repeat the success of Monobank, one of the fastest-growing banking projects in Ukraine.

Koto started to test its banking mobile app in early March and managed to integrate their app into the Google Pay and Apple Pay payment services, becoming “one of the first startups who have done that from the very start,” Rogalskiy said.

But when the quarantine began, the local banking regulator stopped all consumer lending, meaning that the company could not continue testing its main product, credit.

Rogalskiy, however, has tried to turn the crisis into the opportunity. Koto started what the company calls “an operational launch” — mass testing of all the app’s technical processes.

Now, however, all the team is working on its app remotely. Product and IT development are working from the cities of Kyiv and Dnipro in Ukraine. The London team closed its office in London on March 17 when the local government advised doing so, and, like the Ukrainian staffers, are working from home. That includes Rogalskiy, who is working from his home in the U.K.

The company has worked between three offices from the very beginning, holding meetings on the remote conferencing platform Zoom, which has grown increasingly popular around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. So the company just continues making its regular online calls. “For us, it wasn’t that hard to switch,” Rogalskiy said.

Embracing uncertainty

As of April 13, the U.K. ranks fifth in Europe by the number of coronavirus cases – 84,000 people have been infected. For people and businesses, COVID-19 is currently the top source of uncertainty, according to a survey by the University of Nottingham.

Maryna Kuzmenko, a British entrepreneur from Ukraine, knows what such a turbulent time means for the business activity.

“Uncertainty and fears regarding our own health and financial stability in the future negatively influence people’s ability to deliver working solutions,” she told the Kyiv Post.

Kuzmenko moved to the U.K. in late 2016, lured by the scope of opportunities there. Now she leads a British agritech startup called Petiole and works on a range of projects focused on agriculture technologies and digital infobusiness.

Although Kuzmenko and her team were used to working remotely under normal circumstances, the lockdown has still affected every member’s wellbeing. With entire families sitting at home and few opportunities to go outside, the pandemic has changed how people rest and relax, she said.

“The most difficult point is to accept now that there are no boundaries between personal and professional space,” Kuzmenko told the Kyiv Post.

For her friends who live in flats without balconies, but who have children and full-time jobs, the quarantine is a struggle.

Moreover, Kuzmenko says that it is even unsafe in the U.K., where the health care system is strong. COVID-19 is an unpredictable disease and much about it remains unknown.

“I do not think that it is possible to live a calm life in any country now,” she said.

Ukrainian Maryna Kuzmenko moved to the U.K. in late 2016. She is the CEO of Petiole startup – a mobile solution in precision and GMO agriculture. Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in Britain, Maryna and her team switched to the remote work.