From bionic prostheses to innovative education. The most interesting Ukrainian startups of 2021

The success of Ukrainian startups is reflected in the investments obtained, selections for accelerators, and international recognition. In 2021, a lot of Ukrainian startups made good progress. We have compiled the most interesting of them. This includes education, business, artificial intelligence, various devices, and even virtual objects.

Read also: Analysts at a loss: There are too many unicorn startups

The startup DressX is engaged in creating digital clothing. It started working in 2020 in the USA, however it was created by two Ukrainian women—Dariia Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova. Already in 2021, the startup raised two million in investments, and by the end of the year it became known that DressX, together with Google, had developed the first collection of virtual clothing Pixel 6 Material. To create the sketches, they used a Google Pixel 6 smartphone with an advanced photo editing function Magic Eraser.

The main feature of the DressX product is that it exists only in a virtual embodiment and has no physical counterparts. You can get digital clothes by uploading your photo to the project website. After that, the company's designers will analyze the image and make the desired item of clothing, making sure that it suits the client. The finished aitem can be obtained within 1—2 days.

The company is confident that their products will be in demand in the modern world of online work and distance learning, and people who want to look good during virtual meetings will buy them.

Read also: Ukraine lost five positions in the ranking of countries for establishing a startup

The startup Delfast was created back in 2014 and initially worked as a green delivery service. Since 2017, the team has been trying to create their own e-bikes. At the end of December 2020, the company sold its courier business and focused exclusively on constructing e-bikes.

It already has some success in this area. For example, it managed to create an e-bike with a power reserve of 320 km. This means that a person can travel the specified distance on a Delfast bike without recharging or using the pedals. This record is enshrined in the Guinness Book of Records.

At the beginning of March 2021, Delfast managed to raise more than $3.4 million from investors on the Fundable platform, with an initial goal of $3 million.

Delfast is currently developing e-bikes for delivery services, in particular for the B2B market, and is also positioning its product as an eco-friendly alternative to personal transport. Delfast e-bikes are used by the residents of 40 countries of the world.

The authors of the project Awesomic call it "Uber for Designers", and its main page says "#1 Design Platform for Your Business". Users can register on the site and formulate tasks. The platform asks 24 hours to complete them. The startup works on a subscription basis—the access to graphic designers will cost the customer $995, to products—$1,495.

The last two years have been very successful for the company. In August 2020, the startup obtained investments from European investors, and in the summer of 2021, the company completed the summer acceleration program at Y Combinator and raised $125,000 in investments. A real gift for Awesomic for the end of the year was an amount of $2 million in investments that not only confirms the business model success and the project idea promising outlook of but also deservedly makes Awesomic one of the Ukrainian startups that should be monitored.

The end of the year was also successful for the startup Carsifi. The company producing wireless Android adapters for cars raised more than $650,000 on crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo. And this provided that the initial fundraising goal was only $10,000. Such a low initial price was a strategy aimed precisely at drawing attention to the company as to the one that immediately obtained the desired amount on Kickstarter. Thanks to this, the project gained great media support.

Carsifi product is an adapter that allows you to connect your smartphone to your Android Auto car system without any cables. Plus, it can be done regardless of whether the car has Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The adapter connects via USB cable to Android Auto, and then Carsifi via Bluetooth connects to the user's smartphone. The car perceives the adapter as an Android device and starts transmitting data received by the Android smartphone through it.

Established in 2019, Vymex raised millions of investments in December 2021. Interestingly, this happened even before the launch of a full version of the company's flagship product for public access scheduled for early 2022. Now there is a private beta version, but everyone can sign up to test it. Vymex's flagship product is not as flashy as Carsifi's gadget and not as fancy as DressX's clothing, however the company is creating an extremely useful app for small and medium-sized businesses that can help save resources and money. Vymex’s product is a versatile resource management system.

An additional advantage of Vymex is the availability of all information about the business and processes in a convenient form, which allows you to very quickly put newcomers in the way of things. In addition, Vymex's modular structure helps in scaling and growing the business.

The developer of an image processing platform using neural networks also raised $3 million in investments in the second half of the year. The team plans to spend funds to improve their image processing automated platform Claid as well as to invest in recruiting new employees and content moderation.

The main product of Let's Enhance, the Claid platform, works 90% better than the classic graphics editors. Thanks to access through the API tool, users can specify the necessary parameters of the future image, and in accordance with them, the system will edit this image. At the same time, Let's Enhance will improve the image quality, or will at least allow not to lose this indicator.

$11 million in investments—this is the amount obtained by the startup SOC Prime, and that makes it one of the leaders in raising investments in 2021. This is despite the fact that the team has been working since 2015.

The project calls itself "Spotify for Cyber Threats." Its product is a tool for preventing cyberattacks and managing the information security of a company. Businesses pay security researchers, members of the SOC Prime community, when they use their content to fight cyberattacks.

With the increase in cyberattacks, as well as the growing importance of cybersecurity in all aspects of life, it can be expected that the further development of SOC Prime is only a matter of time.

The project in the field of online education Mate Academy raised $1.9 million in investments in 2021. It is noteworthy that the company plans to use these funds to expand into the markets of the United States and Poland.

Mate Academy is an online education platform that helps you master modern IT specialties. The students can study for 4 months, and the education fee will be a percentage of their future salary. Upon employment, Mate Academy students will pay 17% of their salary over two years.

This unusual business model has proven to be successful. At least the company claims that after the first seed investment in 2019, Mate Academy's revenue grew 20 times, and in 2021 the company was able to employ more than 1,300 graduates.

The project, which has been existing since 2013, creates an information system for managing cafes and sales outlets. The flexible product developed by Poster can run on a smartphone or tablet. Through this solution, the owners of the establishments can fully manage the operation of the establishment. The product is easily scalable and can work both with a small business such as a stand or street food outlet and successfully manage a chain of establishments.

The customers pay for a month of using the system, and the payment depends on the number of sales outlets, tablets the application is installed on, and other important things.

Over the 7 years of its existence, the Poster product has become the second on the European market, and in general, Poster solutions are used by establishments in more than 100 countries of the world. In 2019, the turnover of establishments connected to the system exceeded $1 billion.

Our review, of course, does not include all noteworthy Ukrainian startups of 2021. We can also mention, for example, Carbominer—the manufacturer of the device for obtaining carbon from the air, the restaurant management system ORTY, the developer of the ecological everyday objects Effa, or the workflow automation service airSlate. Despite the pandemic, objective difficulties, and institutional barriers, the Ukrainian startup market presents the world with many interesting and promising projects.