14 investors: who funds Ukrainian IT during the war — ranking by AIN.Capital
After February 24, the Ukrainian IT market saw a decrease in investments not only from foreign venture capital funds. Out of 28 active local funds, the editors of AIN.Capital and AIN.UA counted only fourteen that continued to invest in Ukraine despite the war. Seven of them have 3+ investments in the last 500+ days in Ukrainian startups.
These fourteen include: SID Venture Partners, SMRK, NetSolid Investments, Angel One Fund, Burner, TA Ventures, Flyer One Ventures, Horizon Capital, U.Ventures, hi5 Ventures, Hypra, Vesna Capital, Geek Ventures, and N1 Investment Fund.
To compile the list, we took publicly known deals from our feed and archive and datasets of several DaaS platforms. We considered Ukrainian investments to be assets with at least one Ukrainian founder and a development office in Ukraine. Accordingly, only those deals with Ukrainian assets that are publicly traded were taken into account in the rating. Investments that the fund, for example, counts in its track record but does not name were not included in the rating calculations.
To verify the available information, the editors also surveyed the funds. If the figures we had did not match the answers the funds gave, we asked for clarification and asked them to name all their investments.
| Fund | Managing Partners | Average ticket | Number of investments | In UA projects | During the war | Exits/Closed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SID Venture Partners | Dmytro Vartanian | $0.25M | 16 | 13 | 13 | - |
| 2 | SMRK | Andriy Dovzhenko | $0.75M | 20 | 19 | 4 | |
| 3 | NetSolid Investments | Stanimir Dobrev | $0.2M | 30 | 10 | 3 | 1/0 |
| 4 | Angel One Fund | Ivan Petrenko | $0.2M | 3 | 3 | 3 | - |
| 5 | Burner | Yaroslav Svyridyuk | up to $1M | 3 | 3 | 3 | - |
| 6 | TA Ventures | Victoria Tigipko | $0.25M | 202 | 15 | 2 | 61 |
| 7 | Flyer One Ventures | Vital Laptenok | $0.5M | 60 | 17 | 2 | 1/1 |
| 8 | Horizon Capital | Olena Kosharna | $5-$20M | 22 | 16 | 2 | 1/1 |
| 9 | U.Ventures | Yaroslav Johnson | $0.5M | 16 | 15 | 2 | 1 |
| 10 | hi5 Ventures | Andriy Kryvorchuk | $0.15M | 7 | 6 | 2 | - |
| 11 | Hypra | Igor Pertsia | $0.5M | 3 | 3 | 2 | - |
| 12 | Vesna Capital | Andriy Fedoriv | $0.15M | 3 | 3 | 2 | - |
| 13 | Geek Ventures | Ihar Mahaniok | $0.2M | 30 | 5 | 2 | 1/0 |
| 14 | N1 Investment Fund | Nikita Izmailov | $0.5M | 5 | 5 | 1 | - |
Of course, there are more investors in the Ukrainian market. Still, since February 2022, they have either not invested in Ukrainian assets at all or, in a much smaller number of cases, have made follow-on investments in assets already in their portfolios. For example, 3 out of the seven oldest funds, AVentures, CIG, and Digital Future, did not report any new investments during the war, and platforms with paid datasets did not have any.
SID Venture Partners tops the list
This is a relatively young Ukrainian venture capital fund, launched at the end of 2021 by the co-founders of outsourcing companies Sigma Software and IdeaSoft and the Datrics product. The company currently has thirteen partners and more than two dozen limited partners. The SID Venture Partners portfolio includes sixteen companies, including thirteen Ukrainian ones, in which the fund has invested since the beginning of the full-scale war. Its latest investments include InputSoft, Haiqu, and NewHomeMates. As General Managing Partner Dmytro Vartanian told AIN.UA, the fund plans to finance 30-40 companies over the next 2-3 years, five of them by the end of 2023.
The second largest investor in Ukrainian startups during the full-scale war is SMRK.
SMRK was launched in 2013 by Oleksandr Kosovan, founder of MacPaw, and Andrii Dovzhenko. The fund focuses on investing in Ukrainian startups and has invested in 20 projects worth about $17 million since its inception. Since February 24 last year, four new Ukrainian startups have joined SMRK’s portfolio — Osavul, Deus Robotics, Aspichi, Prengi — and received $3.5 million from the fund. SMRK is currently preparing to launch a second fund, which will also involve external investors.
And the third place goes to NetSolid Investments
NetSolid Investments was founded in 2021 by Roman Doroshenko, whose experience includes Zeeks and projects related to affiliate traffic for gambling. In total, NetSolid Investments has eleven investments, including ten in Ukraine. The affiliate marketing company SETAFF, the studio Apme, and the SaaS platform PromoRepublic received investments from NetSolid during the full-scale war.
TA Ventures is the most active Ukrainian investment company abroad
The Ukrainian VC fund TA Ventures was founded in 2010 by Viktoriya Tigipko. Since then, it has invested in 202 startups, including fifteen Ukrainian ones, and made sixty-one exits. During the war, it invested in two Ukrainian assets: the crypto startup Utorg and Opinov8.
Horizon Capital is the most active fund at late stages
The US investment firm Horizon Capital has been operating in Ukraine since 2006. It invests not only in the IT sector and is known for investing in many local product IT companies at late stages. Its investments in Ukraine after the 24th of February include Preply, a marketplace for tutors, and Miratech, one of the oldest outsourcing companies in the country, in which the company has invested twice. In addition, Horizon Capital has recently secured a new fund worth $250+ million.
The ranking was created by Lisa Palchynska, Kateryna Kovtun, and Illya Boshnyakov.