“Five o’clock” — main tech news of the week from Ukraine

We decided to make “Five o’clock” a weekly digest about tech news from Ukraine — and so it’s the first time we’d like to recollect some IT news on Sunday. Let’s look at the week we’ve had in Ukrainian tech and IT entrepreneurial world.

Google has launched a Ukrainian version of the Google Play Store section with apps of news sites and magazines. All materials, which will be signed by the user, are optimized for reading on a tablet or smartphone.

Startup GitLab, founded by Kharkiv’s tech-entrepreneur Dmitry Zaporozhets, raised $ 1.5 mln of seed-investment from 500 Startups, Crunchfund, Sound Ventures Ashton Kutcher, Liquid assets 2 Ventures and Khosla Ventures. This money will be used to open GitLab’s own office in San Francisco and provide expansion of its activities in the US corporate market.

Gigi Wong, professor at Stanford University and one of the best specialists in the world of startups, has arrived in Ukraine to share the experience of MIT / Stanford Venture Lab to create a new university in our country. This university will be called “American University in Ukraine» (AUUA), the opening of is is planned for September 2016.

Company Petcube, created by Ukrainian developers, has launched its gadget’s delivery to Ukraine. At the moment, the order can be fulfilled only from their website, but soon Petcube promises to start delivering its gadget to Ukrainian shops.

Ukrainian Parliament ratified the agreement with the EU on Ukraine’s participation in European programs of science “Horizon 2020”. This gives vast opportunities for young Ukrainian scientists.

IT-volunteers and enthusiasts of the initiative group of Kyiv Smart City invited all Ukrainian startups to participate in the development of “smart city” in the Ukrainian capital.

As part of the Washington business forum dedicated to raising funds in the economy of Ukraine, fund Horizon Capital invested money in the leading Ukrainian e-commerce platform Rozetka.ua

Mobile app “Privat24” from “PrivatBank” started working as Ukrainian local version of Uber. Users of this app can now perform the calculation of the cost of a taxi ride, pick the desired class of the car and pay for the services using any of the cards attached to the application “Privat24”.

TNS on behalf of Google released a study devoted to the peculiarities of the behavior of web users in Ukraine. According to a study, in 2015 Ukrainians own at least 1.1 mobile device connected to the Internet. This is 57% more than in 2013 year.

Since July 13, 2015 Project UA50, established by the group of US successful IT-specialists from Ukraine, announced receiving applications from Ukrainian startups interested in entering the US market. The main task is to help Ukrainian companies in establishing international contacts, searching for investments and to penetrate the global market due to free consulting.

Ukrainian startup Preply received $ 120K of venture capital from US investors and leaves for a summer internship in Berlin. Investments came from the business accelerator TechStars. All participants in its programs start getting $ 18K and participating in educational and investment programs in the US and Europe for 13 weeks. The program of acceleration will help Ukrainians to scale their product following advices from successful tech entrepreneurs from Delivery Hero, Wunderlist, SoundCloud, Foursquare, Tumblr etc.

And finally good news for Ukrainian freelancers working via Upwork or other platforms with foreign customers. NBU cancels the requirement of treaties and acts on the withdrawal of bank funds for work performed for foreign companies or clients.

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