At Manchester Digital, we like to interview our members to find out a bit more about what they do and their work in the Greater Manchester digital and technology sphere. This week we're speaking with Kindgeek.
What does your organisation do?
Kindgeek is a technology company specialising in consultancy services and software development based in Lviv, Ukraine. Kindgeek provides software engineering, agile delivery, product design, cloud computing, DevOps, big data, data science, maintenance, and support services.
For seven years on the market, we’ve grown into a team of 200+ geeks, continuing to expand across all company areas.
Fintech is our key domain, but we also work in Education, Healthcare, Retail, and Media and provide custom software development for SMEs and Startups. We’re proud that our clients were able to raise almost $1B of investments in total with our software development and advisory services.
Having developed our own products from scratch, we firmly believe in a product-oriented approach and build products with a focus on the final users.
What do you think is currently the biggest issue facing the digital and tech industry?
One of the most significant issues the tech industry faces nowadays is customer engagement. The market is full of applications of the same type, focusing on the same issues. Engaging users and grabbing their attention in a world full of digital noise caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has become more difficult due to psychological factors. To grow, businesses need to focus on solving real issues by deeply researching their target audiences and finding solutions to the core pain points.
Security and privacy are the other concerns the tech sector faces due to global geopolitical circumstances. McKinsey latest cybersecurity report reveals a $2 trillion market opportunity for cybersecurity technology and service providers due to the increased risks of cyberattacks, creating a unique moment in time for innovation in the cybersecurity industry.
What is your organisation’s biggest achievement?
Through seven years of work, our company has experienced three major crises: the beginning of war in the east of Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and a full-scale war, yet none has affected our growth. Though all of that time, the company continues to show stability and expands; we’ve developed 100+ products, more than 20 of which gained millions of investments and reached a self-financing milestone. Our most outstanding achievement lies in building meaningful partnerships with clients where we benefit and scale altogether.
What would you consider to be your organisation’s biggest challenge?
As for many companies, our greatest challenge was during the sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, when all companies were struck by uncertainty, and many projects were closed. We're proud to have successfully adapted to the pandemic landscape, and although some of the projects were closed, we haven't made redundancies. We stabilized the situation and continued to reach our goals.
This experience also helped us during Russian invasion. We adapted quickly, as we are used to working efficiently, even remotely. As we're based in Lviv, 43 miles to the Polish border and several hundreds of miles from active hostilities, we helped our employees relocate to the west or abroad and redefined many operational processes to make everything run smoothly.
We've successfully adapted to the new reality, retained all the projects, kept all the deadlines, and never lost sight of our primary goal – to be a platform for positive change for our clients and partners.
In KindGeek, we continued working, though the first few days of the invasion were tricky in terms of efficiency. Since March, most of our employees, 95%, have returned to their regular workflow. What's most invigorating is that we've signed new projects, haven't stopped hiring, and are open to new projects and partnerships. Even during turbulent circumstances, Kindgeek retains its stability by taking cybersecurity measures and having emergency planning.
What do you think the future looks like for Manchester’s digital and tech sector?
Being one of the biggest UK tech hubs, Manchester hosts a community of numerous digital and tech businesses – from start-ups and SMEs to global brands and numerous homegrown, talented entrepreneurs. Since 2020, it has encountered many economic challenges that arose due to the Covid-19 pandemic’s aftershock and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
For Manchester’s key sectors – Fintech, Cybersecurity, E-commerce, SaaS, and Healthcare – resilience and sustainability are the keys to the future. To remain competitive and keep the wind in the industry’s sails, the city and its business sector have to find ways to optimise resources, get more digital, and build products that optimise core processes for the long run – primarily by implementing corporate responsibility, sustainability practices and taking advantage of AI and ML technologies.
For Fintech, AI and ML are game changers; these technologies can improve awareness, reduce costs, help make data-driven decisions, and automate core processes. In addition, SEON, a cybersecurity organisation, found that cyberattacks almost doubled from 2021 to 2022 in the US and UK. Banking fraud has shown similar growth in the UK, with this type of attack happening 66 per cent more in 2021 than in 2020. To mitigate the effects of online fraud and secure costs, UK’s Fintech has to invest in cybersecurity throughout the digital transformation.
Tell us something we might not know about your company.
Originally, Kindgeek was made up of a significant share of aspiring university students, so we started as a student-based company. Decent higher education, flat organisational structure, and startup spirit shaped the business, laid a foundation, and gave rise to many other employees who’ve started their own service and product companies; there’re already 11 of them. Since the Kindgeek launch, we have aimed to be a platform for positive change for our clients and employees
