Ukraine’s tech startup scene keeps lighting up with new stars in 2024. In the first half of the year, Creatio, a business automation platform, achieved unicorn status, following GitLab, Bitfury, Grammarly, People.ai, and airSlate.
To be considered a unicorn, a startup needs to be valued at $1 billion or more. Like the other names mentioned, Creatio was co-founded by Ukrainians and has attracted global investors and users.
The first Ukrainian unicorn was GitLab, an open-source code repository with over 30 million users. Founded in 2014, GitLab achieved a valuation of $1 billion in 2018, according to the Dealbook of Ukraine by AVentures. Bitfury, a blockchain technology company established in 2011, also reached a $1 billion valuation in 2018. Next came Grammarly, a popular auto-editing app that became a unicorn in 2019 after raising $200 million in investments in October. People.ai, a sales management platform, hit the milestone in 2021, followed by the business automation tool Airslate, which crossed the mark in 2022.
Creatio became the newest unicorn from Ukraine, making headlines with its status in June 2024.
Creatio’s Story of Becoming a Unicorn
Creatio was founded in 2014 by Katherine Kostereva as a platform for businesses to automate their sales, marketing, and customer relationship processes. The 10-year-old company has grown from a small startup to a global no-code automation and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) provider, headquartered in Massachusetts, with representatives in 25 countries and an R&D center in Kyiv, Ukraine.In its early years, Katherine Kostereva bootstrapped the company without seeking external investments. It was not until February 2021 that Creatio announced its first investment round, led by Volition Capital, raising $68 million. The company closed its latest funding round at the end of June 2024, raising $200 million from investors including Sapphire Ventures, StepStone Group, Volition Capital, and Horizon Capital, bringing its valuation to $1.2 billion. Creatio said they will use the raised capital to develop new components and templates for different industries, expand the team, and build new partnerships.
Creatio attracted attention and gained popularity due to its functionality and ease of use. Its AI features, including email generation, no-code workflow design, and other capabilities, help teams manage their work processes more productively. In 2023, the startup had over 50% annual growth and was adopted by major organizations, including Colgate-Palmolive, Coca-Cola Bottling Company, and AMD.
Since its foundation, the Ukrainian-rooted company has received awards for its leading performance from enterprises like Gartner and Forrester. In August 2024, it was named the winner of a Gold Stevie Award in the Company of the Year, Computer Software, Large category at The 21st Annual International Business Awards. Previously, Katherine Kostereva was recognized as one of the top women leaders in SaaS (Software as a Service).
Other Ukrainian Startups Close to Unicorn’s Status
Ukrainian co-founders are behind rising tech stars across various sectors, including edtech, fintech, military tech, software development, and more. Among the companies that have gained popularity and are likely to cross the $1 billion valuation are the health and fitness app BetterMe, the book summary app Headway, and the app development company Genesis. These startups are just a few examples of those with strong performance and growing user/customer bases. It’s highly probable we’ll see another Ukrainian unicorn by the end of 2024.
Anahit Avetisyan
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Web3 writer and crypto HODLer with a keen interest in market trends and recent technologies.
