Business news from Ukraine

Rauta first facility to be built with construction project management service is business center for international IT company in historic center of Kyiv

The construction project management outsourcing is a new service in Rauta offer, but the company already has several projects in its portfolio where it performs turnkey construction works.

The new 7-storey business center has an area of about 3.000 sq.m and modern infrastructure with a comfortable workspace for IT entrepreneurs.

Performance of Rauta construction project management outsourcing includes the following stages:

  • Support at the pre-project stage
  • Development of the design and cost documentation
  • Examination of the design documentation
  • Selection of a general contractor
  • Obtaining a construction permit
  • Preliminary work at the construction site
  • Execution of construction and installation works
  • Construction and connection of external engineering networks
  • Commissioning

More information about the construction project management outsourcing

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MacPaw IT company searched

Law enforcement officers searched the office of one of Ukraine’s largest IT company MacPaw and the home of its founder Alexander Kosovan on Wednesday in connection with the land plots acquired by the company to implement an investment project.
“MacPaw’s office and my personal home were searched. Even during a full-scale war, officials find a reason, time and way to pressure Ukrainian businesses,” Kosovan said on Facebook.
According to him, the reason for the searches were questions about land plots that MacPaw legally acquired between 2016 and 2021.
“Before the searches, we provided investigators with all the necessary documents. That is, the searches in our case are an optional measure, but the civil servants decided otherwise,” he stressed.
Kosovan did not rule out that because of the imperfection of the land legislation and because of the outdated regulation “some mistakes could have been made by the officials.
According to him, the dialogue with the local authorities to correct the mistakes and create an interesting and valuable project takes more than three years on the issue of land plots, which were the reason for the searches.
“However, after we invested tens of millions of dollars in the development of the plots, the officials became interested in them, and now they are trying to take away these lands and the asset,” Kosovan said.
In turn, co-founder of monobank Oleg Gorokhovsky suggested on his Facebook page that the searches were related to the fact that “the land plots turned out to be on someone’s wish list.”
“Alexander Kosovan will not be offended. One of the most decent and dignified people I know. A philanthropist, a visionary, a patriot. I think someone simply has his land on their wish list for this year,” he said.
As Gorokhovsky stressed, MacPaw is an international company with many international awards. The company is a resident of Dia.City.
According to information in the database of court decisions, law enforcers have claims to MacPaw Property Management LLC in connection with the implementation of the construction project of the recreation complex “IT-Relax” on the territory of Tsyblivska village united community (Boryspil district of Kyiv region). Criminal proceedings were opened in June 2021. The main charges were inappropriate use of agricultural land and construction of real estate within 100 meters of the Dnieper River’s regulatory and coastal protective strip.
Founded by Kosovan in 2008, MacPaw is a software development company. Its main products are CleanMyMac X, ClearVPN, Setapp and Gemini, Unarchiver. Declared number of users exceeds 30 million.

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IT company DeepL adds Ukrainian to its translation service

The German IT company DeepL, in response to the huge demand from users, has added the Ukrainian language to its translation service. According to a DeepL press release, Ukrainian has become the 29th language available in the translation service.
“Ukrainian has become the top user request this year, so the DeepL team of engineers and language experts has accelerated development and launch to make it happen as soon as possible,” the press release says.
DeepL translations use neural network technology that detects linguistic subtleties to make these translations look natural.
DeepL is a German artificial intelligence company with more than half a billion people worldwide using the company’s services. The quality of DeepL machine translation is based on proprietary enhancements to neural network mathematics and methodology. The company is headed by CEO and founder Jaroslaw Kutylowski.

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Ukrainian IT company opens office in Japan

Ukrainian IT company CHI Software has opened an office in Kobe (Japan).
“Over the past year, with the support of Ukrainian diplomats, the IT Ukraine Association, together with the government of Kobe, organized a number of meetings and webinars, where the Japanese side got acquainted with technological solutions and high-quality IT services from Ukraine. The result of cooperation was the opening of an office of the Ukrainian IT company CHI Software in Kobe,” a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website said on Thursday.
According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to systematically create new opportunities for cooperation with foreign partners for Ukrainian IT companies back in the spring of last year.
“This work brings results that have become especially relevant during a full-scale war. After all, the stability of the Ukrainian economy is extremely important for winning the war, and every successful negotiation, every new contract, every open office further strengthens it. Ukrainian diplomats are making every effort to provide assistance business and work for results together with exporters,” Kuleba said.
The IT Export Boost project started on March 5, 2021. Its main task is to promote IT exports in foreign markets thanks to the capabilities of the network of diplomatic missions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine abroad.
The IT Ukraine Association is the largest specialized association of Ukrainian service and product companies of various sizes in Ukraine. As of December 2021, she represented 120 companies and over 82,000 IT professionals. The task of the association is to provide favorable conditions for the sustainable development of the information technology sector in the country.

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ESTONIAN COMPANY BOUGHT AN IT COMPANY WITH OFFICES IN UKRAINE AND POLAND

Estonian company Nortal, which is engaged in strategic consulting and technology implementation, has bought the Skelia IT company along with its offices in Eastern Europe, Dragon Capital said in a press release.
“Skelia has established itself as an international leader in building dedicated technology teams in areas where customers want to remain in control of the development process while experiencing the stability of a premium team and quality of service. Their strong presence in western Ukraine and Poland will provide Nortal with an excellent platform for growth. Together, we can further expand our business across geographies and time zones while strengthening our offering and serving customers across the full spectrum of their needs,” Nortal CEO and Founder Priit Alamäe was quoted as saying.
As noted, the companies will focus on creating new synergies and value for customers, as well as creating additional opportunities for Skelia employees in Poland and Ukraine, which will now become part of Nortal.
“By joining forces, Nortal and Skelia will leverage each other’s complementary and individual strengths, as well as provide new career opportunities for our global combined team of more than 1,700 people. Nortal brings us a wealth of experience in building end-to-end solutions and products. This greatly complements Skelia’s longstanding business of building over 200 sustainable cross-border IT and engineering organizations for leading companies in Europe, the UK, the Nordics and the US,” Skelia CEO and co-founder Patrick Vandewalle was quoted as saying.
The amount of the agreement is not reported.
Skelia was founded in 2008 and currently employs over 350 people, primarily in Ukraine and Poland. Skelia serves clients in 10 countries and operates through a network of offices in the Benelux countries, Poland, Ukraine and the USA.
Nortal was founded in 2000. The company has more than 1.4 thousand employees and has 20 offices in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.
Dragon Capital acted as an advisor to Nortal on this deal. Oaklins Sweden acted as an advisor to Skelia.

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LVIV IT-COMPANY SOFTSERVE INVESTS $100 MLN IN CAMPUS CONSTRUCTION

Lviv IT-company SoftServe plans to invest over $100 million in the construction of a creative office campus on the site of Lviv penal colony No. 48 acquired for UAH 377.5 million at a privatization auction.
According to a SoftServe press release on the Business Wire portal, construction will begin in 2022 and it will take about five years. An international architectural bureau will be involved in the work on the project.
“The new campus will not only breathe new life into the whole district of Lviv, but will also continue the development of the city as a major educational and technological hub in Ukraine and in the world,” the co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of SoftServe, Oleh Denys, said.
According to the project, the campus will house SoftServe offices, as well as the company’s corporate university, conference rooms and exhibition grounds, a school and a kindergarten, and apartments.
As reported, SoftServe acquired Lviv penal colony No. 48 on a 10.7 hectare plot for UAH 377.5 million at a privatization auction held on June 3.
SoftServe specializes in software production, development services, quality control and support of information systems and business solutions. To date, about 10,000 employees of the company work in 38 offices. The main offices of the company are located in Lviv and Austin (Texas, the United States). The company’s development centers are located in Lviv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernyvtsi, Sofia (Bulgaria) and Wroclaw, Bialystok, Gliwice and Warsaw (Poland).

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