Goodex founder sells Polish share of business

Vladyslav Savchenko, the founder of the food delivery service Goodex (formerly called Foodex), has sold the Polish share of his business. The same Ukrainian service was closed in April due to the full-scale war and crisis. Savchenko posted about it on Facebook.

The entrepreneur says that, in the past twelve months, the project was operational in two countries — with branches in Kyiv and Bydgoszcz. About $4 million was invested in the Ukrainian business. While in the Polish project, the businessman invested four times less, and for less than a year, he received €2 million of profit and reached the project’s self-sufficiency.

“It seemed like a good moment to exit. The new owners will develop the company under the Foodex24.pl brand. They still have to spend some time exploring the amount of technology and know-how we have created,” Vladyslav Savchenko says.

In Poland, Goodex was acquired by the founders of Best Market, emigrants from the Kirovograd Region (Ukraine), Roman Kolesnyk and Sergey Kolesnyk. The brothers moved to Poland in the mid-2010s and started selling Ukrainian products. Currently, they have a delivery service and five regular stores in Warsaw, Krakow, Katowice, and Lodz.

The parties have not disclosed the financial details of the deal. In a commentary for Forbes, Savchenko said that it was more than invested but less than $5 million.

On April 20, 2022, it became known that the online grocery store Goodex in Ukraine was no longer working. The shutdown of Goodex was caused by the war. It was dangerous and simply impossible to carry out logistics processes. It was also difficult to buy goods and work with suppliers because all the wholesalers, manufacturers, and distributors halted their operations.

According to the Goodex founder, the company only managed to keep its IT team. Part of them switched to external projects within the company Powercode, some developers went to the Polish project working under the Foodex24.pl brand, and about 100 employees lost their jobs. The company paid all wages and debts. That was an operating loss of about 2 million hryvnias.