KYIV. Dec 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian company Sixa, which has developed an application for access to a high-performance virtual computer in the “cloud,” has raised $3.5 million from U.S.-based Tandem Capital fund, as well as the investment companies Horizon Capital and Digital Future.
“Sixa is a very valuable company for Digital Future’s portfolio. Fight among investors for the opportunity to finance this startup to a certain extent was aggressive. You be the judge: the project, which boasts rapidly growing sales without the help of marketing, whose customers subscribe for software upgrade,” Digital Future partner and founder Oleksiy Vitchenko told Interfax-Ukraine.
The investment company has not disclosed the amount of investment.
Sixa is a service that allows users to obtain their own virtual high-performance computer in the “cloud,” using which one can perform the most complicated tasks. The service is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Android. Users pay on an hourly basis for the service.
Sixa focuses primarily on developers, designers and gamers.
KYIV. Dec 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s Mevics has raised $500,000 from Britain’s UBTower consulting company.
The company has not presented other details of the deal.
The Mevics team has created a gadget, which controls your posture and synchronizes it with your smartphone using Bluetooth.
According to tentative data, the price of the gadget would vary from $80 to $100.
The team is designing the brand, working on the new website and accounts in Instagram and Twitter. The company is also working on designing new electronics and prototypes.
Mevics CEO Viktor Laushtan said that soon the company intends to launch a campaign at Kickstarter and bring the product to the market.
“First shipments of the product are scheduled for August 2017. Then the company will enter the U.S. and European markets,” Mevics said.
KHARKIV. Dec 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – EU Ambassador to Ukraine Hugues Mingarelli supports the broadening of the EU’s cooperation with the Kharkiv region. He said this during a meeting with head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration Yulia Svitlychna as part of his first regional visit to Kharkiv.
Mingarelli said following the meeting at a press briefing on Tuesday that the European Union seeks closer cooperation with the Kharkiv region. The ambassador said that we are all Europeans, we share the same values and we must work together to improve the lives of people who live in the region.
He noted that the EU, in particular, is ready to promote the integration of internally displaced persons living in the region with the help of humanitarian and economic development programs, as well as share their experience in conducting reforms.
The diplomat said that now, thanks to the opening of the EU markets, Kharkiv companies were able to increase exports to the EU markets.
According to Mingarelli, the EU is also interested in developing cooperation with the Kharkiv scientific research centers and educational institutions.
KYIV. Dec 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) has started building the second continuous-casting machine and a ladle furnace with an annual capacity of 1.4 million tonnes of steel investing over $100 million.
ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih CEO Paramjit Kahlon said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine last week the company has not yet selected the supplier of the equipment.
The enterprise intends to finish the project in Q2 2018.
He added that the enterprise continues modernizing other facilities, particularly the converter shop, investing in rolling mills and building other new facilities.
“We have built one coke-oven battery. We will build another one. Only we in Ukraine are building coke-oven batteries. Total investment is $170 million,” Kahlon said.
“We are doing our best to finish modernization as soon as possible,” the top manager said.
He said that there is a lack of skilled staff, in particular, contractors do not have them. This slows the implementation of investment projects. Kahlon urges the state to pay attention to training of employees and not to strangle business. Otherwise nothing positive would be seen, he said.
KYIV. Dec 12 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Head of the National Investment Council and former head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Borys Lozhkin wants to get the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) interested in Ukraine’s potential in the energy, agriculture, aerospace and IT sectors.
“Today representatives of QIA have arrived to Kyiv under an invitation of the National Investment Council. We have prepared an eventful program: meetings with ministers of infrastructure, regional development, agriculture, head of the State Property Fund and representatives of business are scheduled. We would show to foreign investors that Ukraine has a huge potential from the point of view of the placement of capital, first of all in the energy, agriculture, aerospace and IT spheres,” Lozhkin wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday.
He said that QIA is a sovereign wealth fund founded by the government of Qatar in 2005. It manages capital of $492 billion.
“QIA works on the markets of many countries, and Europe is in the focus of the interest of Qatari investors. The fund holds shares in Empire Statе Building, Shell, Siemens, Volkswagen and Agricultural Bank of China,” Lozhkin said.
In turn, head of office of the National Investment Council Yulia Kovaliv said that this is a first visit of representatives of QIA to Ukraine.
“We will speak about privatization, potential public private partnership projects, development of energy effective technologies in Ukraine [by the way, we assess the investment potential of the energy effective technologies market for household consumers at near EUR 35 billion)… I will keep you informed,” Kovaliv wrote on her Facebook page.
KYIV. Dec 12 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Metinvest B.V. (the Netherlands), the parent company of Metinvest international vertically integrated mining and steel group, in the first nine months of 2016 saw consolidated EBITDA rise by 21% compared to the same period last year, to $989 million.
According to preliminary financial results, its revenues during the reporting period fell by 15%, to $4.568 billion, while capital investment rose by 4%, to $199 million.
Metinvest noted since the beginning of the year it managed to reduce total debt by 1%, to $2.907 billion, while net debt by 4%, to $2.668 billion, increasing available funds by one-third, to $239 million.
