The largest conference for small and medium-sized businesses took place at the Pochaina event hall. The event, which was designed to provide Ukrainian entrepreneurs with insights and practical advice, brought together several hundred guests, more than 50 speakers and dozens of businesses that had the opportunity to present themselves in the craft fair area, on the networking stage and among projects that pitched to potential investors and partners, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
The main stage of the Mind Entrepreneur Summit featured panel discussions and expert guests. The speakers discussed the following topics:
Financing for business
“International concessional lending and grant programmes are successfully operating in Ukraine. To get them, you just need to apply to a bank that cooperates with foreign partners and receive funding. It is provided on favourable terms and takes into account all the “pains” of entrepreneurs working during the war. In particular, within the framework of cooperation with the USAID Business Resilience Investment Project, OTP Bank supports micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Ukraine in four main areas: relocated businesses, businesses affected by hostilities, agribusiness, and women in business.”
Igor Tsymbal, Head of Sales SME, OTP Bank
Return of veterans
“The key is the return of veterans to communities and support for military families. Having experience of dealing with veterans and the military, who are now thousands in communities, not all veterans are ready to return as employees. That is why loan and grant programmes for defenders are in demand today.”
Tetiana Volochai, Director of the MHP-Community Charitable Foundation
Export industries of Ukraine
“As of now, Ukrainian IT accounts for about 5% of Ukrainian GDP and is the number two export industry in Ukraine: we generate 40% of service exports and bring a lot of foreign exchange earnings to Ukraine. We bring stability.”
Maria Shevchuk, Executive Director, IT Ukraine Association
Switching to Ukrainian software
“Not every accountant is professional enough to switch from one software product to another. We see that most accountants are tied to the tool, not the process.”
Elena Kuzmicheva, CEO, Self-ERP
And just about Russian software in Ukraine
“We urge you to abandon Russian software. We understand that there are analogues on the market, there are opportunities for transition, and the main thing is that the companies present in the hall should be the conductors of this information“
Nina Vasilieva, Vice President of PR, IT Ukraine Association
And also about entering foreign markets
“There are those countries that are no longer developing, for example, European countries: they are already developed, there is a certain stagnation. Developing countries: Saudi Arabia and the UAE. If we compare them, Saudi Arabia is a more attractive market.”
Roman Yavorsky, Commercial Director, IT-Enterprise
Thepractical stage, as its name suggests, was devoted to everyday but urgent matters.
Pavlo Guzyr, Head of Alternative Sales Channels at OTP Bank, spoke about raising funds for agricultural business. In 2023, the Bank financed the sowing campaign for UAH 1.1 billion, and this year it provided new loans to SMEs in the agricultural sector for UAH 600 million. According to him, the Bank is the market leader in working with financial agricultural receipts, and the basis for this success is the AgroFabrika scoring project, which simplifies access to bank loans for agricultural producers and offers many partnership programmes with leading manufacturers of seeds, fertilisers, and plant protection products.
His colleague from OTP Bank, Oleksandr Rasakhatskyi, Head of Customer Experience Management, shared his experience with customer experience and customer values, which are primarily taken into account when developing and maintaining all banking products and services, regardless of the type of client – individual, entrepreneur, large corporate client, etc.
“Do regular surveys after a customer purchases something, connects a service, installs an app, etc. It is like regular blood tests to check the state of the body. Checkups are also important – voluminous research, in particular on the level of NPS, the customer support index. If you need to solve a business problem, visualise the customer experience, for example, create a customer journey map – step-by-step pictures of the path your customer goesthrough,”
– Oleksandr advised.
Lyudmyla Slobodianyk, Chief Compliance Officer, Director of the Compliance Department at Raiffeisen Bank, spoke about the procedure for opening accounts for doing business abroad.
“Given that the banking legislation in Ukraine is harmonised with the requirements of EU directives and international organisations, the process of opening accounts for business abroad will not be new. European banks require their clients to transparently disclose their ownership structure, provide information about the real owners, communicate the purpose and nature of their activities, and provide proof of these facts. This may include contracts, personnel, production facilities, premises, experience of managers in a particular business area, etc.Theprocedure for opening accounts in EU banks involves an interview with company management or owners, which may differ depending on the country and the internal policies of a particular bank, and, based on its results, a request for additional information – so businesses need to be prepared for this,”
– liudmyla Slobodianyk shared her experience.
According to her, Raif provides consultations for its clients planning to enter international markets, including opening accounts with RBI Group banks.
Oksana Skorobrekha, Head of B2B at OLX Ukraine, spoke about commercial business development – more precisely, about doing business with the help of online marketplaces. Her in-depth presentation on this area is aimed at increasing the number of businesses that, despite the difficult B2B segment, want to attract new users online.
Nataliia Katerynets , Leading Business Analyst at Self-ERP, used the example of her own showed how the implementation of the ERP system helps to plan resource allocation and analyse costs and performance. This example and the experience of companies where Self-ERP has already implemented this system confirms that the cost of implementation is more than paid off by the ERP system’s ability to
– show management bottlenecks;
– help plan and control the allocation of resources and costs
– provide a tool for dealing with almost all of today’s challenges by enhancing business automation.
She spoke about corporate information systems for enterprise resource planning – ERP systems. In her opinion, this tool, which is expensive and difficult to implement, can be the answer to almost all the challenges faced by entrepreneurs, “by strengthening their business with automation”.
Volodymyr Panchenko, Head of the National Projects Department at the MHP-Hromada Charitable Foundation, which developed and is developing the Do Your Own business idea competition, shared his experience in implementing charitable and grant projects. The competition has become quite a popular project and is currently in high demand from small businesses.
“Of all the businesses we have supported, about 72% continue to operate. This applies to the businesses we supported in 2020-21. That is, despite the pandemic and full-scale war, small businesses in communities demonstrate resilience,”
– he emphasised.
About the organiser
Mind is a business publication that provides explanatory journalism and business and investment analytics.