+4 Kyiv
UNIT.City Kharkiv, the first innovative cluster in eastern Ukraine, will officially begin its operations in March 2020. Its founder, Ukrainian entrepreneur Vasyl Khmelnytsky, made this announcement on Thursday, December 12, during the presentation of the project in Kharkiv. The businessman is convinced that the opening of innovation parks and clusters throughout the country will allow Ukraine to solve many social issues, including the “brain drain” problem.
“We know what problems our country faces. Young people go abroad. Make no mistake about it, but there is a 95% chance that the talented people who left the country will not return. The reason is today, all developed countries prioritize only one thing: not territories, but talented smart people. Our country teaches a child at school until the age of 16, then at the university until the age of 22, and then other countries take the most talented ones. They give them cheap loans and other benefits. And the talents never come back,” Khmelnytsky noted.
He said that he had asked himself, "how to build an ecosystem where our business, our entrepreneurs become successful and achieve success in our country?"
“Thus, we created UNIT.City. We started building it three years ago in Kyiv. UNIT.City is a “city in a city” that is focused on high technology and innovations. And we believe that by creating conditions like in Silicon Valley, we will stop or at least reduce the migration of our talents, "said the founder of UNIT.City.
According to the businessman, high-quality modern educational programs will contribute to the improvement of the labor market and the growth of the country's economy.
“In fact, when we created the accelerator, when we created the school and the university, we saw that it is just the school and the university that are creating those new talents that are already achieving success. And we realized that the same model can work in any major city. I came to the realization that my first project which I want to implement in other regions of the country and which can give new opportunities to entrepreneurs and business is going to be in Kharkiv. Today is not the opening day, it will be in March. Today, we offer some sort of a promo: we show opportunities, and I hope you like it. Our task is to help you become successful and to do it in our country," summed up Khmelnytsky.
The public discussion on the topic “Ecosystem for successful business development”, which was held at UNIT.City Kharkiv, was also attended by UNIT.City CEO Dominique Piotet and the Promodo founder, co-founder and member of the Kharkiv IT cluster supervisory board Oleksandr Kolb. The discussion was moderated by Roman Katerynchuk, founder of the Artjoker IT company, co-founder of MyCredit and a member of the supervisory board of Kharkiv IT cluster. The entrepreneurs tried to answer the question of how business should change in order to create products that meet global challenges of the time, which ecosystem will contribute to the development of business around the country, and what conditions are necessary so that the best specialists do not emigrate and see a real perspective for growth in Ukraine.
It is known that the innovative cluster UNIT.City Kharkiv duplicates the ecosystem of UNIT.City and is directly connected with it. On its territory, there will be coworking, offices, RnD centers, and much more.
As Vasyl Khmelnytsky noted, Unit School of Business and the industrial accelerator INDAX will help to develop small and medium-sized businesses that create jobs around the country. And the training of high-quality specialists in the field of innovation is already being carried out by UNIT Factory Kharkiv – an IT school in which students study following the unique ucode program developed jointly by specialists from UNIT Factory and The National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute". UNIT Factory graduates work in leading companies and launch their own innovative projects.
Фото: UNIT.City Kharkiv
Vasyl Khmelnytsky is the founder of the UFuture holding company, which combines his business and social projects. The company has a diversified portfolio of assets in real estate, infrastructure, industry, renewable energy, pharmacy and IT. The value of UFuture's assets is estimated at $ 550 million, and the total capitalization of the businesses it invested in is more than $ 1 billion.
