Top Stories April 17: Ukrainian startups seek opportunities in overseas markets

UKRAINE

Russia’s war against Ukraine brought IT sectors of the United Kingdom, Poland and Ukraine closer by prompting closer partnership and material support for Ukrainian companies. [Source: Emerging Europe]

Three Ukrainian startups took part in a major industry event Paris Blockchain Week held in Paris in late March seeking potential investors, partners, and customers. The companies relocated from Ukraine and are now building their international presence. [Source: Ukraine Digital News]

Ukrainian startup Zeely, which uses artificial intelligence to help medium- and small-sized companies promote growth on social media, raised $1 million in a seed investment round. The funding will be used to integrate Zeely’s solution with TikTok, beef up capabilities with AI and embed payment systems. [Source: Inventure]

UZBEKISTAN

Uzbekistan’s company DevHub launched a neural network Saiora based on the ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 technology. Saiora supports inquiries in Russian and English, it can create images, text as well as find answers to queries. [Source: Spot.uz]

STARTUPS

YallaHub, a Russia-founded Dubai-based aggregator of marketplaces, raised $600,000 from financial company Regolith. The funding will be spent on geographical expansion to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. [Source: RB]

Mighty Buildings, a Russia-founded US-based 3D printing house startup, obtained $50 million from undisclosed investors. The company had previously raised $101.8 million in investments since 2018. [Source: RB]

The founders of Mighty Buildings have launched another startup called Intently that helps B2B companies find and attract consumers through AI technology. Intently uses various sources “ from social media presence to digital footprints” to identify possible consumers. [Source: Y Combinator]

Russia-origin startup Optic launched a service AI or Not that defines whether an image was made by a human being or generated by a neural network. The service is accessible through a Telegram bot or Twitter with a special extension for Google’s web-browser Chrome in the making. [Source: VC] 

Russia origin e-bike rental platform for couriers in New York, USA, Whizz raised $3.4 million on the back of the surging last mile delivery market. The money will help the startup grow its presence throughout New York. [Source: Crunchbase]

CIS 

Economies of the Central Asia and Caucasus countries grew by 5.1% in 2022 on average, beating the forecast of 4.2 % driven by mass migration of high spending professionals from Russia which resulted in a higher demand in retail, accommodation and food industries. Another factor that contributed to the growth is a hike in exports to Russia that had cut off a lot of business ties with its traditional Western trade partners. [Source: The Asian Development Bank]

Citizens of the former Soviet republics lost at least $5 billion in scam crypto projects over the last three years. The number of fraud schemes is increasing year to year, with users rarely able to recover lost funds. [Source: RB]

RUSSIAN EXPORTS

Russian startup Ivitech has launched a motorbike rental platform in Indonesia that enables the user to buy his bike out after some period of renting it. After the model has been tested, it will be expanded to other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. [Source: RB]Russian dating mobile apps Mamba and Teamo are actively investing in overseas expansion targeting the markets of the US, Germany, Israel, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia, Mongolia. One of the drivers for going abroad is a serious number of Russian-speaking citizens who fled Russia after the start of the war against Ukraine. [Source: RBC]