2023… the year of Ukrainian stability and indomitability. We are grateful for this year of the Armed Forces, our relatives, friends, acquaintances who protect us at the cost of their lives. And we tried to do everything in our power to support innovation in Ukraine.
- In February 2023, we officially became DIH – the fourth in Ukraine! https://startups.org.ua/asotsiatsiia-startapiv-ukrainy-stala-dih/</a >
- In spring 2023 – held a course of free webinars for startups, universities, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) on financial opportunities, crowdfunding, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/@UkrainianStartupsAssociation - We spent the summer looking for funding, fundraising for ourselves and helping startups. And they were able to attract two grants: from GIZ for equipment for the Association up to UAH 100,000, and from UNDP and GIZ in partnership with the NGO Strategy of the Future and the NGO Digital Education of the Future for capacity building of the NGO up to USD 42,000.
So, within the framework of these projects, we managed by the end of the year:
- Improve the platform for supporting innovative projects. Previously, this was the Association’s site, where everything had to be manually filled out by the site administrator based on the Google forms you filled out. Now it is a separate platform with personal user accounts where you can make changes to your projects. https://platform.startups.org.ua/
- Create a professional consulting department, involving a wide range of experts, increasing their level of knowledge and uniting them. Thanks to this, the consulting department of the Association provides not only fundraising consultations, but also others, in particular: on export, marketing, development of presentations, pitches, development of business models and business plans for investors https://platform.startups.org.ua/konsaltynh/
- Conduct a course of webinars and more than 50 individual consultations for SMEs/startups https://startups.org. ua/serija-bezplatnih-vebinariv-z-zhovtnja/
- And the main thing is to organize and successfully conduct the First International Investment Forum for INVESTinUA innovations at a high level! More than 250 participants were able to meet at the Intercontinental Hotel: representatives of Ukrainian business, international investors, and 9 startups were able to seal their projects https: //startups.org.ua/jak-projshov-pershij-investinua/
In general, the Support Ukrainian SME project involved more than 200 Ukrainian SMEs, which received qualified support in order to attract investments, obtain fruitful international networking and submit more than 50 grant applications.
- In addition to these results, we were able to expand our community to over 300 startups/innovators https://t.me/+h0dmPNPuSGBjMjI6</ li>
- Gathered 7 international consortia and together with partners submitted applications for European grant programs https://startups.org.ua/partnery/</ a
- More than 10 startups have joined the Association’s members: https://startups.org.ua/startapy/ and more than half of the existing members have extended their annual support packages!
- The Association team continues to develop new projects, in particular, we are preparing the finalization of the support platform for innovative projects for AI matching of startups and investors. But we are developing a mobile application with the working name: à la Startup-Tinder
We had many plans for this year, but managed to realize even more! We are ready to work to support innovation further and share successful experience. Read the development strategy for 2024 in the following article.
