Hack4reSTART: International matchmaking of Kharkiv IT Cluster members with customers in Bucharest

08 June 2023 y.

The Kharkiv IT Cluster's IT community creates solutions and products for customers around the world, offering more than twenty years of proven expertise in digital products and services for any request. The positive development indicators of the IT industry in 2022 were mainly made possible by international contracts that were concluded before the full-scale invasion. Nowadays, the issues of establishing international partnerships and concluding trusted agreements are quite acute, as they affect not only the prospects for the development of the IT industry but also the economy of Ukraine as a whole. At the end of 2022, Kharkiv IT Cluster was the only Ukrainian IT association to become an official partner of the EEN (European Enterprise Network) Consortium, the world's largest support network for small and medium-sized companies with international ambitions, which has many years of experience in business environments in 60 countries. This year, Kharkiv IT Cluster is creating even more platforms for networking around existing challenges, searching for international partners and new opportunities for members' development. On May 25, Hack4reSTART Bucharest took place, an event where IT companies could find new customers and non-tech businesses could find digitalization solutions. Hack4reSTART is a hybrid event, so Kharkiv IT Cluster member companies could join both offline and online. Manufacturing industry goes digital! The event was attended by 106 participants from 13 European countries who were united by a single goal: to find new partners and implement digitalization and green manufacturing in their companies' internal processes so that businesses could reduce costs and increase their efficiency.

«First of all, I would like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the conference. The networking was incredible, the audience was very interesting and I made a lot of useful contacts. The only thing missing was a mobile application for faster and more comfortable communication with participants, as many people did not read or see the messages on the website. Everything else was great,» Margarita Abankina, GoIT, shared her impressions of the previous event.

Despite the fact that the event has already passed, participants have access to the partner search platform and can hold further online meetings with potential partners and clients until June 30.

«We participated online this time. There were a little over 100 participants and I have met with only one potential client so far, but there is still time and I plan to talk to others. It was inconvenient that most of the attendees did not speak English well,» Raccoon Gang comments.

2022 and 2023 demonstrate that our strength is in our community, as together we scale solutions, strengthen the IT industry, and support and lay the foundation for Ukraine's post-war economic recovery. Join Kharkiv IT Cluster — become part of a progressive community and open your company to international partners and the whole world! We create an ecosystem for technology business. Rooted in Kharkiv Expanding Globally.