UNIT.City is launching the Entrepreneur-In-Residence mentoring program in partnership with EIR Europe, with the support of u.ventures, the Western NIS Enterprise Fund. The goal is to create high standards of entrepreneurship culture in Ukraine. The task is to set the right direction for the development of Ukrainian startups and avoid typical mistakes, utilizing international partners’ experience. Mentors are people who are experienced in conducting and successfully selling businesses worldwide. They will be immersed in the Ukrainian startup ecosystem for a month and work closely with companies in the format of personal sessions, public consultations, training.
Both sides will benefit from the EIR program. Startups will get the necessary expertise helping them build business processes more efficiently, understand how to get into new markets and how to create a product that people will buy. Mentors will see lots of startups on their radar screen and will be able to invest in projects in the future and join the board of these companies. The program will last for six months.
“The Ukrainian startup ecosystem is very young. We have virtually no entrepreneurs with success stories going through a full cycle ‒ from an idea to the exit of a project ‒ who could be mentors of people without relevant experience,” says Max Yakover, CEO and Managing Partner of UNIT.City. “That’s why the market needs such a program. EIR in Ukraine will help startups gain knowledge of the development and successful management of a company, as well as the sale and launch of an IPO. Globally, we hope that our program will give impetus to a new movement in the Ukrainian innovation economy.”
Edmundas ‘Eddy’ Balcikonis will be the first mentor of the EIR program. He is a co-founder of the Lithuanian-Belarusian startup TrackDuck, which was sold to the U.S.-based InVision, part of the Atlassian group, in May 2017.
Balcikonis plans to get acquainted with interesting projects and learn more about the rapidly growing startup ecosystem of Ukraine. According to Eddy, Kyiv has the potential to become one of the main European technology hubs. “Ukraine has a huge amount of talent with excellent engineering skills. Plus, Ukrainians are entrepreneurs by nature,” Balcikonis said.
Participation in the program is free.
UNIT.City is Ukraine’s first innovation park. It is the location where all-inclusive ecosystem and infrastructure enable high technology and creative businesses to happen and flourish. The mission of UNIT.City is to become an innovation hub and an entry point for investors, partners and new technologies from around the world; a unique platform where advanced companies, startups, individual specialists, and research laboratories get an opportunity to cross paths and work together ramping up their growth and honing quality. UNIT.City offers its residents a package of services: meetings with investors, consulting, access to accelerating and mentoring programs, prototyping laboratories, well-established infrastructure for work and life.
The resumption of lending to the real economic sector is one of the top priorities of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), although the Verkhovna Rada’s support is required for this, NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii has said. “We need to resume lending to the real economic sector as soon as possible. Over UAH 80 billion could be funneled to the economy,” he said, speaking in parliament when his appointment to the post of the NBU head was discussed.
Smolii said that bills on protection of creditors’ rights and debt management should be passed, which would help to clean the portfolio of non-performing loans (NPL). “If these bills are passed, next year we could resume lending,” he said.
The governmental committee has supported a decision of the Innovations Development Council in Ukraine to expand KVED (Ukrainian Industry Classification System) by clause about mining as activities to support functioning of distributed database, maintaining its integrity, invariance and consistency via computing operations made by electronic computing machines, Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv wrote on his Facebook page.
He said that Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Head of the parliamentary committee for informatization and communications Oleksandr Danchenko backed the initiative. Kubiv said that he believes that stimulation of crypto economy development in Ukraine is one of the important elements of developing innovations in the country.
Founder of the technological social organization SocialBoost and the first noncommercial open data incubator Open Data Incubator 1991 Denys Hursky also told Interfax-Ukraine that the meeting on the development of innovations held in Kyiv on March 14 also addressed the issue of special employment visas for foreigners. As reported, Groysman predicts the start of the operation of the fund for the development of innovations in Ukraine in July this year.
PJSC Avangard, uniting the poultry farms of the eponymous agricultural holding, the largest egg producer in Ukraine, in 2017 posted a net unconsolidated loss of UAH 183.14 million, which is almost 54.6% less than in 2016 (UAH 403.43 million). According to a report on holding a shareholders’ meeting on April 28, 2018, its uncovered loss in 2017 amounted to UAH 11.84 million, while a year earlier undistributed profit was fixed at UAH 71.3 million.
Its assets in 2017 increased by 9.8%, to UAH 43.43 billion. Total debtor indebtedness rose by 21.8%, to UAH 24.34 billion, current liabilities decreased by 5.5%, to UAH 36.2 billion.
The holding owns 19 poultry farms, ten farms breeding laying hens, three incubators, six feed mills, three elevators, the factory for egg production Imperovo Foods. The company exports its products to the markets of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the CIS and the EU.
As reported, Ukrlandfarming agricultural holding in 2017 reduced the land bank by 5.8%. Ukraine’s largest producer of eggs Avangard agricultural holding, controlled by Ukrlandfarming, whose shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, in October 2015 completed the restructuring of eurobonds for $200 million. Previously American Cargill has withdrawn from among the shareholders of Ukrainian-based UkrLandFarming (ULF) agrarian holding, according to a ULF financial report for 2016. Cargill’s subsidiary, Cargill Financial Services International Inc. by the end of 2015, had held 1,668,749 ULF shares, or 5% of the total number. By the end of 2016, the number of shares owned by Avonex Limited had not changed, whereas the package held by Cargill was transferred to Cyprus-based Quickcom Limited’s ownership. The report says that the sole owner of Avonex Limited and Quickcom Limited is Oleh Bakhmatiuk. Cargill acquired a 5% stake in ULF early in 2014 for $200 million. Based on the sum of the deal, the total value of the holding was assessed at $4 billion.
