Business
| May 23, 2022

Ukrainian IT firm enters Latin America

/ Our Today

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SoftServe Inc.’s Austin, Texas base in the United States. (Photo: The Buisness Journals)

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Ukrainian information technology (IT) firm, Softserve has entered into Latin America with plans to further roll out more operations in the region.

Having made its full-speed entry into Latin America by unveiling two offices; one in Guadalajara (Mexico) and the other in Medellín (Colombia), the outsourcing firm plans to launch an office in Chile shortly.

The company has promised to hire more than 3,000 people in the region over the next three years.

The company issued a press release stating that a strong IT talent pool, time zone alignment and geographical proximity to the United States were the primary reasons behind the expansion into Latin America. In that press release, Softserve CEO Chris Baker articulated that, “delivery offices in Latin America will better connect our clients to top talent in the region and will more efficiently support operations within these time zones.”

Founded by two polytechnic students in Lviv in Ukraine, Softserve’s expansion comes amid a raging war in its homeland with Russia. Softserve’s main customers are IBM, Cisco, Deutsche Bank and Cloudera.

Catering to North American clients

It is becoming increasingly certain that most of Softserve’s nearshore centres will cater to its company’s North American clients, whose numbers have grown rapidly in the past two years following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has won a lot of new clients in the energy and oil industries in recent years.

Analysts say Latin America’s large presence in the energy and commodity sector could also be the reason behind its expansion. Nearshore Americas reports Baker as saying, “as our client roster continues to grow, both new and existing customers are requesting more digital engineering to support their transformations.”

Chris Baker, SoftServe CEO, speaking at the September 2019 staging of premier Ukrainian ICT event, IT Arena in Lviv. (Photo: FAcebook @SoftServeCompany)

While the talent pool for nearshore operations is a global problem, Softserve looks confident in acquiring enough tech talent in the Latin American region. The company assured that there are “over 500,000 IT professionals in software engineering and 350,000 IT graduates throughout Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.”

This confidence stems from Softserve’s own ability to train new employees in software development, having a large team of experts and the company continuously offers upskilling opportunities to its employees under a banner called “Softserve University”.

With a staff of over 13,000, Softserve operates as many as 41 delivery centres around the globe, mostly in Europe. Its real growth came in 2014 when it acquired two of its European rivals: Amsterdam-based tech services firm Initium Consulting Group BV and UGE UkrGermanEnterprise GmbH. Three years later, it made its third acquisition: Coders Center, a company based in Wroclaw (Poland).

Challenges of invasion

The company has been challenged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Days after the war began, Softserve started to move thousands of its employees to safer places within Ukraine.

Smoke rises after an airstrike, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Lviv, Ukraine March 26, 2022. (Photo: REUTERS/Vladyslav Sodel)

Baker told KSL.com recently said that the IT firm moved around 2,000 employees from Eastern Ukraine to Western Ukraine in a space of a few weeks. As the war raged on, Softserve leased an entire apartment in Gdańsk, a port city in Poland to relocate hundreds of employees.

Softserve has declined to talk with Nearshore Americas. According to a recent Forbes report, its Ukrainian operations are still in limbo.

Other ‘bottom of form’ problems has surfaced before such that the last two years have been troublesome for the company. In September 2020, it was hit with a ransomware attack.

The breach dealt such a blow to its operations that the company had to shut down many of its internal systems in a desperate bid to block the virus.

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