The share of vacant space on the office real estate market in Kyiv in the first quarter of 2019 fell by 0.4 percentage points (p.p.), reaching 7.2%, the press service of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) in Ukraine has reported. “We expect a further decline in vacancy, although not significant. On the one hand, the low commissioning volume that has been observed on the market since 2015 and steady demand contribute to the absorption of space in existing buildings, on the other hand, rising rental rates restrain the activity of tenants,” Head of office Group at JLL, Alexandra Globina said.
The highest rental rates in class A facilities in the first quarter of 2019 increased 6%, to $32 per sq. m. a month, which corresponds to the value of five years ago, according to JLL. At the same time, rental rates in class B facilities also increased to $25 per sq. m. a month.
According to JLL, a decrease in vacancy and an increase in rental rates have led to a gradual increase in developer activity.
The total volume of transactions in the office real estate market in Kyiv in the first quarter of 2019 amounted to 22,500 square meters, with about half of the transactions accounted for IT-companies, JLL experts said.
Mriya agricultural holding is closing its office in Kyiv, employees are being transferred to offices in Ternopil and Lviv for boosting production effectiveness, the company’s press service has reported. “In connection with the successful completion of the debt restructuring process, Mriya no longer needs a representative office in Kyiv. Now the company is negotiating with employees about the possibility of moving them to a permanent place of employment in the offices in Ternopil and Lviv,” the agricultural holding said .
The company said that the main task for next year is to increase production efficiency and work directly at the location of assets, which will allow employees to respond quickly to challenges and get involved as much as possible in the production process.
Mriya is a vertically integrated agribusiness holding, founded by Ivan Huta in 1992. Today, its land bank is 165,000 ha. The capacities of the holding’s grain storage facilities are estimated at 380,000 tonnes.
Singapore’s Agrocorp has opened its office in Ukraine, according to information from the public register of companies and individual entrepreneurs. The Ukrainian subsidiary was registered on October 17, 2018. The owner of the company is Agrocorp International PTE Ltd. (Singapore). The director of the newly created company is Yuriy Klympush. The charter capital is UAH 698,200.
According to information on the website, Agrocorp International was founded in 1990. Its core business is trade with crops, in particular, wheat, rice, oilseeds, sugar, cotton and nuts, and their processing.
The company has 22 representative offices in 22 countries and trades in over 30 countries.
Agrocorp started its processing business in 2012 in Canada, currently has eight plants in four countries, with a total capacity of 700,000 tonnes.
GlobalLogic Ukraine, an IT company, the largest software developer in Ukraine, will open the second office in Lviv on October 12, 2018.
This was announced by the head of the company’s office in Lviv, GlobalLogic Vice President for Engineering Denys Balatsko on the sidelines of the Lviv IT Arena 2018 conference.
“This is a separate building, which was built according to our wishes and allocated completely to our company. Today, about 300 of our engineers have already moved there, but the official opening will take place on October 12,” he said.
According to Balatsko, departments for the development of medical software and embedded solutions will be located in this office.
In the opinion of the company, the question of availability of office premises equipped with serious IT infrastructure is acute in Lviv.
“Now we see a very high demand for office space and companies are often looking for a place where they could find room. There is not enough quality office space,” the expert said.
GlobalLogic Ukraine is the largest software developer in Ukraine. It has offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and Mykolaiv.
The international marketplace for finding private tutors Preply has pulled in $4 million in the seed round. Lead investor was Point Nine Capital, Berlin-based venture fund, investing in SaaS and marketplaces at early stages. “Investors in Preply’s seed round include Arthur Kosten (ex-CMO at Booking.com, 2003-2012), Polish VC RTAventures, founder & CEO of DocPlanner Mariusz Gralewski, Poland’s Grupa Pracuj EO Przemyslaw Gacek, Diligent Capital Partners (Ukraine) and SMRK (Ukraine),” Preply reported.
“Next year we plan to become the leading marketplace for finding private tutors of foreign languages in the world,” co-founder and CEO of Preply Kirill Bigai said.
Managing Partner of Point Nine Capital Pawel Chudzinski, in turn, said that the fund took this opportunity to enter the fragmented online tutoring market, evaluating the focus on consumer experience and global proof of the concept, and will contribute to the efforts of the Preply team to win leadership on it. The new round of financing will support the long-term development of new products, including the Preply calendar, instant booking options, and the launch of a mobile application.
In addition, the funding allowed Preply to open a second office in Berlin and build up a team of senior professionals working on the product: managers, designers and developers. In the near future the startup plans to search and appoint VP of Marketing.
The company was founded in 2012 by Bigai, Sergey Lukyanov (Head of Product Design) and Dmytro Voloshyn (CTO) with offices in Kyiv and Berlin.
Some 70,000 square meters of new office real estate will be offered in Kyiv in 2018-2019, Head of the Consulting Department of UTG Rostyslav Symonov has said. “We are planning to commission 70,000 square meters in 2018-2019. These will be the third line of Astarta Business Center, which has shown a very good pace of renting out, Europassage Business Center, Forum Amursky Business Center, office buildings on Volodymyrska and Sahaidachnoho streets, and Unit City,” he said during a press conference on the results of the real estate market in H1, 2018 hosted by the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency on July 11.
The expert said that IT companies, which account for 44% of tenants, will form the principal demand for rent of offices in the capital. He added that this makes office real estate more resistant to currency fluctuations that might occur in 2018-2019 due to the payment of Ukraine’s foreign liabilities.
According to UTG, 128 business centers operate in Kyiv. Class A offices account for 30.7%, class B – 63.9%. Class B offices are in high demand, while demand for class A offices is formed mainly by movement of the existing tenants.
Symonov also said that Kyiv office real estate market will grow significantly as soon as Ukrainian IT companies start making their own products. He added that a trend for investment in purchase of offices should be expected in Kyiv.
Kyiv-based UTG was founded in 2001. Its core business is overall support for development projects. More than 100 real estate objects were opened with the participation of UTG, including Lavina Mall, New Way, Ocean Plaza, Gulliver, Pyramida, and Komod (all based in Kyiv), Megamall (Vinnytsia), Most City Center (Dnipro), French Boulevard (Kharkiv), and Global.UA (Zhytomyr). UTG also operates in Russia, Belarus, Georgia, and Moldova.
