IT Export Boost: first signs of Singapore-Ukraine cooperation

Historically, Ukrainian IT companies have always relied solely on their own efforts, nevertheless their success has been remarkable. However, a lot more can be achieved with the assistance of the state. Today, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our embassies abroad are noticeably displaying their support and willingness to help through their actions,  noted Natalia Mitrofanova, the Vice President on International Cooperation of IT Ukraine Association.

November 15th marks the date of the first Singapore-Ukraine IT business forum on innovative approaches of Big Data processing and Cloud technology development. During the event Ukrainian IT companies together with the representatives of Google and TeraData discussed relevant questions, among which were the following:

• What are the differences between Ukrainian and Singaporean IT markets and what kind of added value do Ukrainian companies offer?
• What is the future of Cloud technologies?
• How does the Big Data and Machine Learning synergy work and what are the success cases of such synergy implementations by Ukrainian businesses?

The IT Forum, having introduced the two markets, finished on a high note, creating an opportunity for the Singaporean and Ukrainian companies to get to know each other better and therefore 50 B2B meetings were conducted, during which 5 NDA’s were signed.

We are delighted with the success of the first IT business forum that SBF Global arranged with the Embassy of Ukraine and Ukraine IT Association. Several Singapore tech companies are looking forward to starting collaborations with Ukrainian companies, and we are confident that there will be more opportunities for collaboration in the future, said Mr Prasoon Mukherjee, GlobalConnect@SBF Committee Member

12 Ukrainian companies participated in the forum, including:

• SoftElegance;
• Tocan;
• N-iX;
• Сrayon;
• Eleks;
• Infopulse Ukraine;
• Intellias;
• bvblogic;
• AZSoft.rocks;
• SPD-Ukraine;
• Jmind;
• Corefy.

The Singaporean IT business forum was a successful event, as next week we already received several inquiries from local companies. I am convinced that the deep technological expertise of Ukrainian engineers and our extensive experience in developing innovative solutions for global companies will help Singapore businesses reach their ambitious goals, said Orest Furhala, Head of Partnership at Ukrainian IT company N-iX.

The 10 companies representing Singapore at the event were:

• It-Werks Singapore;
• AI Club Asia;
• SKS Consultancy;
• Athena Dynamics;
• Asian Resources Centre;
• GeTS Asia;
• Mainspring Technology;
• Innovations by SSA Group;
• NTUC LearningHub;
• Cat and Pillar.

Launched on March 5, 2021, the IT Export Boost aims to promote Ukrainian IT services on foreign markets with the assistance of the MFA’s diplomatic missions’ network abroad. Reference: The Ukrainian IT sector is closely integrated into the international market. According to Opendatabot, Ukraine’s IT exports in the first 9 months of 2021 grew by 35% compared to the same period last year. Business revenue from IT exports during this period amounted to US$4.84 billion dollars, which is nearly as much as the revenues of the last year in total. Among the total export of services of Ukraine, the share of IT has already reached 38%. For comparison, at the beginning of 2020, it was 24%. The Exporters and Investors Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is a platform for Ukrainian and foreign businesses and government agencies to attract