Yurii Kostiuchenko/ Image by Vitalii Holich
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Founded initially as a service company, Ubraine began to develop its startup UBOS one and a half years ago. Its system is based on the low-code methodology which helps create the software from reusable components, which have already been coded. In the conditions of Russia’s invasion, the startup was among those who maintained its operation due to the stable foreign incomes and decisions that secured the team and earnings of the employees.
The Chief Business Development Officer of UBOS, Yurii Kostiuchenko narrates that after February 24, the leadership decided on the preventive distribution of allocated funds and allowing the team members to volunteer.
«In the first week, we started volunteering quite much. Given the wartime uncertainty, Andrii [startup’s CEO] decided to pay all salaries for the next month in advance, namely at the end of February. A week later, we also paid for April, so that our employees had their money for two months ahead. Everyone who had been granted any salary increase, additional payments or bonuses, received them too,» – he said adding that it gave all the team members the opportunity to donate and volunteer while preserving their income and jobs.
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The startup’s representative says the team expected a new crisis approach during the preceding months.
«As mature and pragmatic people, we all understood already at the end of January that the herd wasn’t merely staying near our borders. Our CEO, Andrii Bidochko, was arranging a physical place for our startup in the Netherlands, but he also foresaw something bad and managed to return to Ukraine,» – Yurii says.
Startup's CEO Andrii Bidochko
Like the other businesses we interviewed, UBOS saw the importance of supporting the state, so the taxes were also paid in advance. This seems a strategic step given the startup’s orientation on the Ukrainian market, through which it intends to reach Western customers. Therefore, the team is planning to continue working with Ukrainian projects, setting lower prices for their products. Yurii Kostiuchenko explains that this is not the classical dumping price policy, rather the product is cheaper because of its specificity compared to the existing alternatives. UBOS is ready to share its platform for free with anyone who would like to foster Ukraine’s defence with its help.
Read also: Ukrainian startups versus war: From eco-outfit to sleeping bags for the military
Special volunteering initiatives, although most of them are still kept secret, show how the new methods of programming came of help. For UBOS, its low-code platform became the way of technical assistance to the Ukrainian military, in particular its territorial defence units.
«We’ve received the information that sometimes on the checkpoints, it’s sometimes hard to understand who is passing them. We developed a Telegram bot that functions quite simply: you put the number from a license plate or registration certificate of the car, and it pulls up data from the open sources or database of the territorial defence,» – Yurii Kostiuchenko explains.
Using the Telegram’s flow and interface, UBOS set up the bot on its own platform, showing how the simplified coding can help create security software fast, and possibly engage in this process with a wider range of volunteers, even if they don’t have enough coding skills. With this purpose, the startup offered the volunteer organisations to create a system of managing the humanitarian aid that flows into Ukraine, but this idea is still unimplemented.
By Vitalii Holich
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Lviv Now is an English-language website for Lviv, Ukraine’s «tech-friendly cultural hub.» It is produced by Tvoe Misto («Your City») media-hub, which also hosts regular problem-solving public forums to benefit the city and its people.
