There are successful businesses and well-known companies that everyone knows about, uses its products and recommends to friends. However, not everyone knows who initially came up with ideas and launched projects. This list, particularly, is of favored companies with Ukrainian roots — check it out.
Grammarly
Grammarly is on a mission to improve lives by improving communication. Its communication assistance technology is used by more than 50,000 teams and 30 million people every day. The company was founded by Ukrainians Oleksii Shevchenko, Dmytro Lider, and Maksym Lytvyn in 2009.
Grammarly uses a combination of technological approaches and human expertise to offer unmatched, market-leading communication support to individuals and enterprises. Its AI-powered suggestions help people communicate with confidence and help businesses achieve better results. Grammarly's newest product, GrammarlyGO, responsibly applies generative AI to help people quickly compose writing, rewrite paragraphs, draft replies to emails, and more with a prompt. It’s contextually aware and accounts for personal voice, offering relevant and personalized suggestions that respect user agency and authenticity. All Grammarly services are backed by enterprise-grade security and privacy safeguards, and work across the many apps and devices where writing happens.
Grammarly has been recognized as one of TIME's 100 Most Influential Companies and one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in AI. Today, the company has hubs in Kyiv, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, and Berlin.
MacPaw
You also might use CleanMyMac, an advanced clean-up app, designed to power-up and protect Macs, developed by MacPaw. MacPaw is a software company that develops and distributes software for macOS and iOS from Kyiv, Ukraine. In addition to CleanMyMac X, they have created other well-known products such as Setapp, ClearVPN, Gemini Photos, The Unarchiver, and others.
The company was established in 2008 by Oleksandr Kosovan, a talented 21-year-old Ukrainian student. He wrote the first code for CleanMyMac and received lots of positive feedback from users. This is how the company’s history began.
Today, MacPaw boasts over 30 million users worldwide, with their applications installed on every fifth Mac across the globe.
Reface
Maybe you have tried swapping faces with Reface? It’s a popular mobile app that allows you to replace faces in videos and photos, voice-over content, and generate AI portraits from multiple selfies.
The startup was founded in 2018 by Ukrainians Roman Mohylnyi, Oles Petriv, Yaroslav Boiko, Dima Shvets, Ivan Altsybieiev, Denys Dmytrenko, and Kyle Sygyda. Reface initially started as a face-swap app and reached #1 on the App Store during COVID, gaining 250 million users to date.
The company’s portfolio now includes apps such as Reface, Revive, Restyle, and Memomet.
Petcube
Do you have a pet? If so, perhaps you also own a Petcube, which allows you to see, talk to, play with, and treat your pet whether you're at home or away. Petcube enables people to care for their pets remotely by interacting with them through a smartphone. The accompanying app connects pets to the internet and understands them through machine learning.
The company was founded in 2012 by Yaroslav Azhnyuk, Alex Neskin, and Andrii Klen. The idea for Petcube came to Alex Neskin while he was seeking a way to entertain his dog named Rocky. Petcube received funding through Kickstarter and became one of the most successful crowdfunded pet products in history.
All Petcube products are proudly designed and engineered in Ukraine.
Radioaktive Film
Have you seen Coldplay’s ‘Up&Up or Paulo Nutini’s ‘Iron Sky’ clips? These were shot by the Ukrainian production Radioaktive Film. The team has also worked on 19 Cannes Lions-winning spots, including Libresse’s ‘Blood Normal,’ which won a Grand Prix Glass Lion and a Titanium Lion.
Co-founder of the company is Ukrainian Darko Skulsky. Radioaktive’s works have been recognized at prestigious awards such as British Arrows, MTV VMA, the Epica Awards, and Shots Awards. And as a production company, Radioaktive has been awarded the Shots Production Company of the Year 2018 Award.
The company developed award-winning short-form films for brands such as Audi, BMW, Lacoste, Huawei, Hyundai, Nike, Apple Bounce, Apple Watch, Xbox, AFK Arena with Elijah Wood, as well as HBO well-known mini-series Chernobyl, clips for FKA Twigs ‘Cellophane’, Paulo Nutini’s ‘Iron Sky’ and Coldplay’s ‘Up&Up’, etc.
Banda Agency
An agency that helps brands talk to people. Banda was also named the best creative agency in Central and Eastern Europe by the French Epica Awards 2019.
Banda Agency was formed in 2011 by Ukrainians Yehor Petrov, Pavel Vrzhesh, and Yaroslav Serdyuk in September 2011. Banda is now an independent creative agency working as one studio in Los Angeles and Kyiv.
One of the most successful Banda projects is the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 branding, created together with the Republique studio. For this work, the team received the Cannes Lion Award. Also, Banda Agency was involved in creating the largest marketing campaign from the Ukrainian government, Ukraine NOW, which aims to shape the brand of Ukraine in the world and demonstrate it as an open, modern country where the most exciting things are happening right now. The campaign features Ukrainians who are launching progressive initiatives, businesses, festivals, creative academies or innovative technology parks.
Headway
Looking for a self-development shortcut? Try the Headway app, the most popular book summary app worldwide, offering key insights from bestselling nonfiction books. Access over 1000 15-minute text and audio summaries for on-the-go self-growth.
Headway is a global EdTech startup with Ukrainian roots that develops microlearning solutions for busy adults. Products by Headway help 50M+ users worldwide to make self-growth a sustainable habit with whatever format suits their needs best. Recognized for its transformative impact, Headway was included in the prestigious Global Silicon Valley (GSV) EdTech 150 list of 2023 and emerged as a finalist in The Europas Hottest EdTech Startups Awards 2022. Since its inception in 2019, Headway has witnessed remarkable growth, evolving from a three-person startup to a dynamic team of over 170 individuals spread across offices in London, Kyiv, Nicosia, and Warsaw.
At the heart of Headway's mission is the commitment to make the best ideas accessible, igniting a passion for self-improvement among users worldwide. Flagship product is the Headway app. As the most popular book summary app globally, it offers users a gateway to fun and easy growth by providing key insights from the world's nonfiction bestsellers. With a library of over 1000 text and audio book summaries, the Headway app enables users to learn on the go. Users can engage with the Headway app through various interactive features, including reading and listening to 15-minute summaries from nonfiction books, available in both text and audio formats performed by professional voice actors. The app also offers daily insights and widgets for motivation, streaks to encourage continuous learning, curated collections tailored to users' preferences, a spaced repetition feature for effective memorization, and the ability to highlight and save key insights from summaries.
In addition to the Headway app, the Impulse app is another remarkable creation by Headway. Impulse is a brain training app that keeps users' minds sharp through bite-sized games and logic puzzles. It holds the distinction of being the number one most downloaded brain training app globally and sits atop the Health & Fitness category in the USA.
Preply
If you need to find a tutor or become a tutor, you can do it with Preply, an online language learning marketplace connecting more than 32,000 tutors teaching 50 languages to hundreds of thousands of learners in 180 countries worldwide. With student-tutor matches being suggested through a machine-learning algorithm, recommended tutors create customized lesson plans to suit the learner’s budget, schedule, and current knowledge.
Preply was founded in 2012 by the Ukrainian team of Kyrylo Bihai, Serhiy Lukyanov, and Dmytro Voloshyn. Today, the company has over 400 employees of 58 different nationalities and based in 30 countries across Europe, USA, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
YouScan
If your job requires you to stay on top of consumer opinions about your brand, competitors, or industry events, you might have already used YouScan. It is an AI-powered social media monitoring and analytics platform that serves 400+ customers worldwide, including well-known brands and agencies. YouScan helps to uncover actionable consumer insights and manage brand reputation on social media.
Founded in 2010 in Kyiv, YouScan has evolved into a distributed team with offices in Ukraine, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Poland, Netherlands, Cyprus, and Mexico.
In addition to its powerful text and image analysis capabilities, YouScan recently introduced an Insights Copilot, the first conversational assistant for social media listening powered by ChatGPT, that dramatically simplifies the analysis of consumer opinions on social media.
BetterMe
Maybe you are into sports and exercise regularly with BetterMe app? BetterMe has over 150M users worldwide and over 5M people train with their app each month. BetterMe: Health Coaching app is ranked among the world’s TOP 3 by the number of active monthly users in the Health & Fitness category.
So, BetterMe is a leading Ukrainian wellness company that develops accessible digital health products & athleisure for people of all ages, backgrounds and physical abilities. The company was founded in 2017 by Victoria Repa. Today, BetterMe has over 250 employees and is available in 190 countries. Compilated by Tetiana Radionenko
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