Uber international technological company, the founder of the eponymous mobile attachment for calling taxies, has opened its headquarters for Central and Eastern Europe in Kyiv.
Oleksiy Stakh has been appointed Uber General Manager for the region.
“All employees from Central and Eastern Europe will move to Kyiv and will work here,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.
Stakh said that the region includes Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
According to the company’s press release, earlier Stakh was Uber General Manager in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
According to him, in 2017, the service started working in six cities (Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Vinnytsia). The number of downloads of the application reached more than 1.7 million. The average time of delivery of a car (in Kyiv) was reduced to 6 minutes or less; the average rating of the driver in Ukraine fell from 4.8 points in the first half of 2017 to 4.797 points (as of December 20). The average passenger rating in Ukraine at the end of the year was 4.89 points.
Commenting on the increase of tariffs, Stakh said that this step allowed the service to attract more drivers, while the company did not notice the outflow of users.
According to Stakh, from December 20, 2017 Uber also launched a new service in Kyiv – uberVAN. In this category, cars with six seats will be available for users.
The cost of the trip with uberVAN will be calculated using the formula: UAH 45 for providing a car, UAH 5.8 per kilometer and UAH 1.8 per minute of travel. The minimum cost of the trip is UAH 80. For long distances after 20 km the tariff starts to be UAH 15 per km.
Mercedes-Benz Vito, Volkswagen Transporter, Mitsubishi Grandis and other cars will be involved in uberVAN. One of the conditions of connecting a car to the service is the presence of at least six passenger seats equipped with seat belts in the car.
He also said that in 2018, the company will focus on the development of the region, plans to double the staff in Ukraine.
In addition, it is planned to launch a number of Uber services, in particular, Uber Eats (a food delivery service), announced in July. At the same time, Stakh said that it is not yet planned to launch this service in the cities of the country with a population of less than 500,000 inhabitants.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said that Ukraine’s exports to Canada grew by 76%, and imports from Canada by 93% in 2017.
“This year alone our exports to Canada grew by 76%, and imports from Canada by 93%, almost two-fold from last year,” he said at a joint press conference with Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland in Kyiv on Thursday.
Klimkin noted large potential of growth of mutual trade between the countries.
According to him, the agreement on a free trade area between the countries can be expanded to cover services and investments.
AVentures Capital, investing in innovative companies at initial phases, in the past 18 months (as of mid-December 2017) invested over $3.5 million in seven Ukrainian companies.
Managing partner of AVentures Andriy Kolodiuk told reporters on Thursday that average receipt of the fund starts from $500,000, and investment in companies during their expansion – up to $1.5 million.
Kolodiuk said that in 12 months the fund invested $500,000 each in Spinbackup and Bookimed (initial investment), around $500,000 in Teamfusion, invested its part in Petcube, the total volume of the round was $10 million (additional financing).
“Three more deals for $500,000-$1.5 million remain secret, including with two companies at the growth phase with over 100 employees. These are conditions of our contrast with them regarding confidentiality of some information,” Kolodiuk said.
He said that in most projects the fund was a first investor. The fund also helped actively attract financing from other investment funds (in particular, for Petcube AVentures helped to raise $8 million in 2017).
Kolodiuk said that the fund plans to close two or three more new deals in 2018 (in H1 2018), and active negotiations are being held with a dozen companies.
YURiA-PHARM pharmaceutical company is mulling the possibility of supplying antitubercular agents to Brazil, Director General of YURiA-PHARM LLC Dmytro Derkach has said.
Currently the company is waiting for the results of the inspection of its production sites conducted by the National Agency for Sanitary Supervision of Brazil (Agencia Nacional deVigilancia Sanitaria, ANVISA), he said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine.
“Today Brazil is interested in products made by YURiA-PHARM, in particular these are antitubercular agents,” Derkach said.
The company seeks to continue work on the introduction of new medicine production and the implementation of the strategy to enter international markets in 2018.
“Today, our products are present in over 25 countries. Our work is being done in 50 countries,” he said.
According to Business Credit company, in January-November 2017, YURiA-PHARM was in the top three leaders in pharmacy sales in kind and it is a dynamic leader in the high price cluster.
YURiA-PHARM is a member of the Association of Manufacturers of Medications of Ukraine.
State-owned enterprise Energoatom, U.S.-based Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and U.S.-based Central Storage Safety Project Trust (CSSPT) have signed an agreement on a $250 million loan for the construction of a centralized spent nuclear fuel storage facility.
OPIC will insure political risks (BOC coverage) on the funds to be borrowed by Energoatom, while the Ukrainian government guarantees the fulfillment of the Ukrainian enterprise’s debt obligations on the 20-year amortization loan.
The funds will be used to supply containers for storage and transportation of spent nuclear fuel and other equipment, which will be provided by U.S.-based Holtec International.
“Ukraine will not spend about $200 million annually on removal of spent nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation, and it will safely store valuable nuclear materials locally until their processing becomes feasible and energy efficient as much as possible,” the ministry said.
As earlier reported, Energoatom in January 2015 signed an agreement with Holtec International on the development and introduction of spent nuclear fuel technologies worth almost $300 million.
Premier Hotels and Resorts (Kyiv) plans to finish construction a five-star apartment hotel near the Bukovel tourist complex (Ivano-Frankivsk region) by early 2019.
The company told Interfax-Ukraine that the apartment hotel will be opened under the Premier Resort Hotel brand. It would have 130 rooms with an area starting from 25 square meters.
The construction of the hotel was started in April 2017. The area of a land parcel is 0.25 ha and the gross area of the hotel is 7,054 square meters.
LevDevelopment (Lviv) is the developer and constructor of the project, while investors are individuals. Premier Hotels and Resorts will manage the hotel.
According to the company’s information, as of December 18, 2017, 30% of apartments have been sold. The cost of one square meter starts from $2,300 (taking into account decorations, furniture and household appliances).
Premier Hotels and Resorts (Premier International LLC, Kyiv) is composed of 17 hotels under the Premier Palace Hotels, Premier Hotels and Premier Compass Hotels brands. The hotels are located in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, Odesa, Poltava, Sumy, Kherson, Donetsk, Pochayiv, Mukachevo (Zakarpattia region), Oleksandria (Kirovohrad region) and Starovoitove (Volyn region).
According to the unified register of companies and individual businessmen, as of December 18, 2017, the founder and head of the company is Iryna Sidletska.
