How the war affected the first innovation park in Ukraine UNIT.City and its community

UNIT.City is the first innovation park in Ukraine, opened in 2017 on the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. It helps talents, inventors, and entrepreneurs meet each other.

Artem and Denys helped the project overcome the difficulties associated with the pandemic. Now they tell how UNIT.City has been coping with challenges since the beginning of the war. They also disclosed how UNIT.City has supported its residents and how the community has changed.

Now they tell how UNIT.City has been coping with challenges since the beginning of the war.

Short review of the UNIT.City community before the war

Our innovation park was bustling with life. We held many events, actively helped residents, and supported them in any of their ideas. Companies came to us so that we could join their incredible activities. Our team said "Yes" to these requests and dived into such initiatives.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation supported us in our different activities. UNIT.City has many fantastic international partners and solid relations with Ukrainian media. Therefore, we could easily take any of our startups or residents to the whole of Ukraine or partially to the international arena.

How UNIT.City worked in the first months of the war

On the first day of the war, we came to UNIT.City and immediately decided to ensure the residents' safety. The security service of our innovation park completely blocked the entrance and allowed only residents to enter the territory. Such measures were also needed to ensure the safety of people and property inside. In essence, we have turned UNIT.City into a militarized facility that outsiders cannot access.

Next, we engaged in communication with residents. We told them they could rely on our team about their company's property on our territory now, as UNIT.City would take care of their preservation. In this way, resident companies could first think about their own safety and their families.

At the beginning of the war, we also all went remote because we had a large team of people who also needed to keep their families safe. We were in touch daily and understood that our team was only dealing with security.

We set up a bomb shelter to which our employees brought their families and beds. Some even spent the night there for some time. By the way, representatives of our resident companies also came to spend the night with us in the first months of the war because they felt safe on the territory of UNIT.City.

In March, the enemy fired missiles at the Kyiv TV tower, and our territory is next to it. Some parts fell on UNIT.City, and one of the buildings was slightly damaged. The most important thing was to hold out until the beginning of April when the Kyiv region was completely liberated.

Rebirth of UNIT.City

At the end of spring, part of our team went to the office and gave themselves three months for our residents to return to the offline format in UNIT.City. Part of our team arrived at the innovation park on May 1 for the first time since the beginning of the war. We thought we wouldn't be able to raise this project anymore. It was more like Chornobyl then because it was empty all around. There was only one resident on the territory, whom we were pleased about, and we hugged him sincerely when we met.

At that time, we provided companies with the most loyal conditions. If they couldn't pay rent, they could continue working on the territory of UNIT.City. Our team is proud to have not terminated a single contract.

In the summer, security told us on the phone how many people came each day. And gradually we began to notice how there are more and more of them: 200, 250, 300, and so on. And so, one day in August, we learned that there were already 1,300 people and 500 cars in the parking lot on our territory. It was a crucial moment when UNIT.City returned to normal.

By the way, we had a funny situation then. In August, residents actively returned to their offices in our park. One of their representatives complained that a jar of raspberry jam had disappeared from his refrigerator. At the beginning of the war, we removed all the products in the office that could spoil over time. Then we gave this man three jars of raspberry jam, but he said he had a special jam (smiling).

UNIT.City community during the war

With the outbreak of the war, everything collapsed. We had a large team responsible for communicating with residents and the community. After the war, all the girls left Ukraine. We tried to work remotely, but when you deal with residents in Ukraine, you have to breathe the same air with them to understand their needs and requests fully.

At the same time, when the employees were in other countries and trying to restore the Ukrainian ecosystem of companies, which is going through not the best times, we realized that the process needed to be revised.

So, unfortunately, we said goodbye to the last team. And now we have a new head of ecosystems - Yevgenia Bespalova. She is very experienced in this market and is trying to rethink what we will do at UNIT.City.

We're now trying to reassemble our community and understand how it will work with the Kyiv and Ukrainian communities. Our team strives to return UNIT.City to its leadership position as a hub that brings together the entire Ukrainian tech and IT ecosystem.

We recently had a collaboration with YouTube blogger Samokhvalov, who makes voice-overs for Hollywood movies in his incredible style. So, recently he became the voice of our video about UNIT.City. He said that we have Starlink and generators here, that people don't have to go anywhere, and that we have heaven on earth here.

Besides, UNIT.City achieves excellent results in the blockchain. We have an actively developing crypto community, which holds many events on our territory. Moreover, Vitaly Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, came to us. We plan to have a crypto meetup for about 5,000 people in the spring. 

Previously, we weren't very involved in building a community in this direction, but since last year, this area has become the core of our activities. Our team has added a crypto-terminal to UNIT.City to pay for coworking time and goodies. We also plan to make a cryptocurrency exchange point.

Our team has also noticed changes in the requests of our residents before the war and now. Previously when they thought about joining UNIT.City, they were looking for additional value from us: community, development, ecosystem, accelerators, and startups. But now, for them, safety, reliability, continuity of operational processes of their company, and comfort have come first.

The number of residents before the war and now

Before the war, we had 110 resident companies with a total staff of almost 4,000 people. Now we have about 94 resident companies and about the same number of people. We managed to do this because we attracted companies with many employees during the war. At the same time, part of the resident team works remotely, so there could be even more people in the territory of UNIT.City.

How UNIT.City helps resident companies during wartime

When we returned to UNIT.City, we had an exciting meeting with the Ministry of Digital Transformation. They shared the results of their research, in which they found that it's essential for people during the war to meet each other. People now want to talk about ordinary topics, hug, and share emotions. We quickly considered this idea and realized from our experience that people now want to be together.

Last June, we launched the BE UNITED platform to help companies in the field of creativity and IT: holding events in UNIT.City, office rent, and other collaborations. UNIT.City was willing to do this conditionally for free so that people would just come to us. We launched this initiative both for our resident companies and for outside companies. Moreover, we contacted USAID for a grant to support this program.

UNIT.City is also ready to help companies with research and promotion of services and products. People came to us to conduct training for veterans and military personnel. Representatives of the Drone Army organized trainings, and the Canadian Embassy congratulated the migrant children on St. Nicholas Day. And we have a lot of such different events going on now.

UNIT.City understands Ukraine's current situation is about something other than money, so we are trying to meet people. At this time, we should be together and help each other. UNIT.City should be the same reliable partner and provide all companies with the first necessary conditions for their work. Therefore, we equipped two bomb shelters and purchased one of the most powerful generators to provide light for everything needed in our territory. And even any blackout won't affect the work of our offices and co-working spaces.

In addition, UNIT.City has a huge free parking lot, which we plan to make even more significant. We declared before the war, and we now say that UNIT.City is a reliable partner that will ensure uninterrupted work processes of resident companies on its territory.

Plans to expand the community in 2023

UNIT.City is currently actively working to attract large companies to its ecosystem. This year, we hope to engage just a few Ukrainian and foreign influential organizations. Our team's sure that cooperation with these structures will be beneficial both for them and for us.

We plan to make our community a living organism to create the best innovation park. If you need a company, there's a 90% chance UNIT.City has it.

Our team develops our innovation park so that the companies in it collaborate and create top joint products. It's essential to us that our people develop projects valued at billions of dollars. All these factors will lead to a positive effect on the economy of Ukraine.

Construction of offices and blocks of flats in UNIT.City

Unfortunately, due to the war, we were forced to stop several of our projects. For example, we planned to open a comprehensive school from 1st to 11th grade with a mathematical focus next year. However, we have already built the foundation of the building earlier.

At the same time, we plan to complete the construction of our UNIT.Home blocks of flats. We hope the first owners will move into their apartments for repairs in the 1st quarter of this year. We recently announced the completion of all works in one of the buildings, and the other two are still in progress.

UNIT.City also plans to complete the construction of two more large business campuses in the 1st-2nd quarter, which we're creating together with Kovalska. These structures will have very cool exterior lighting, which we will be able to display after our victory in the war entirely. We have built only about a fifth of the planned part on the territory of UNIT.City. Therefore, we have a lot of work ahead of us to create the same perfect innovation park with everything people need.

In addition, we came up with a concept in which there will be no cars on the territory of our city. Therefore, we're now actively building huge multi-level underground parking lots.

Sources of UNIT.City investment and further development

We're now greatly helped by resident companies who can pay rent. Our team's trying to cooperate with international financial organizations to get some grants for startups and events and to support the economy.

At the same time, the UNIT.City team is not faced with whether it is necessary to execute the general plan for 100% project implementation. For example, we don't need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build five more business campuses. Our primary focus is to maintain our infrastructure and provide residents with the necessary services and educational programs.

We currently have enough rental income from our offices to support UNIT.City in the direction we have set for this year. And after our victory, we plan to return to our frozen projects.