Learn how to – Sergey Tokarev from Roosh talks about the challenges of Ukrainian IT during the war and when it is over

Learn how to – Sergey Tokarev from Roosh talks about the challenges of Ukrainian IT during the war and when it is over.

In the last hundred years, no country in the world has had such potential that Ukraine will have after it wins, Roosh Founding Partner Sergey Tokarev said in a comment to the Ukrainian media dev.ua. According to Tokarev, Ukraine is expecting tens of thousands of qualified IT specialists when the war is over, and their experience and skills will benefit the country. At the same time, there might be some challenges as well.

Among the challenges, Sergey Tokarev names the process of attracting investments in the technological sphere. Foreign investors demand to relocate their key project teams to safer places. This is not surprising, because the war significantly increases the number of risks associated with both possibility to work and even the whole well-being of a company. In addition, despite the bravery and resilience of Ukrainians, the war anyway affects productivity. One can see it sharply when there are blackouts in the country.

With this in mind, it is quite difficult to predict the future of the Ukrainian IT industry, but there are some tendencies anyway.

For example, quite a lot of people have already come back to Ukraine, in particular to Kyiv in the summer. It was the time when the threat of being attacked in the capital was minimal. And even now, people keep coming back. But Sergey Tokarev believes that when the war is over, there will be a lot of Ukrainians who might want to return to Ukraine, including those who emigrated back in the 1990s and early 2000s. These people are already actively helping the country with money and resources. And these are the people who crave to rebuild the country’s economy after the war.

Sergey Tokarev also believes that many foreigners might come to Ukraine after the victory. According to Tokarev, this is a great chance for Ukraine to adopt the experience of thousands of smart people who are rushing to the country.

At the same time, once the ban on crossing the country border for men is lifted, some specialists will go abroad, primarily IT specialists that have opened offices in other countries. Some of such technology companies have already moved their core teams abroad and can completely relocate their offices outside of Ukraine.

At the same time, when the war is over, cooperation and assistance to Ukraine will be a kind of trend that many players in the global IT market will want to join. This should have a positive impact on the number of tech companies in the country. Cooperation of the IT sector with the state will also be strengthened – in particular, regarding military tech and Artificial Intelligence. After all, this cooperation can provide the country with the best results.

Many Ukrainian IT specialists can enter the global tech labor market. The world is currently undergoing a wave of mass layoffs. According to Tokarev’s forecasts, this tendency will continue. Let’s say, many American IT companies will change their employees to outsourcing, so there will be only a few in the office staff. Since Ukraine has a professional and fairly affordable labor force, soon Ukrainian IT specialists might be able to take the positions of dismissed employees abroad.

Sergey Tokarev adds that in Ukraine, as well as in the world in general, there is currently a shortage of highly qualified engineers (especially hardware) and product managers. Therefore, there will be a great demand for these specialties in Ukraine, as well as in other countries

Note.

Roosh is a group of tech-based investment companies. Their activities are focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The company was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its development occurred during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. Roosh includes such projects as AI/ML-community AI HOUSE, SET University, startups Reface and ZibraAI, venture studio Pawa, venture company Roosh Ventures, and research company Neurons Lab. Roosh Ventures includes several dozen startups from the USA and European countries. It invests about $20-25 million in its projects per year. The Roosh’s global goal is to transform Ukraine into the largest hub for AI and ML projects in Eastern Europe.

This year, Roosh bought a non-controlling stake in Neurons Lab. This is the first project that Roosh has invested in since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The startup Neurons Lab develops AI-based technological solutions.