That was the focus of Tech Driven Growth, an online entrepreneurship program by Garage48 and Ukrainian NGO Divergent Woman, funded by the Estonian Centre for International Development (ESTDEV).
Across two separate cohorts, 85 Ukrainian women entrepreneurs took part in business model design sprints focused on validating business models, understanding customers and identifying where digital solutions could create real value. The strongest businesses then moved into acceleration, with individual mentoring, expert support and practical work on their products. Each cohort completed its own full learning cycle and ended with its own Demo Day.
The program grew out of a much longer Estonia-Ukraine collaboration. Garage48 has worked with Ukraine’s startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem for more than a decade and has also supported Ukrainian women entrepreneurs in Estonia, where founders have been able to learn from a highly digital business environment and Estonia’s digital-state experience. Tech Driven Growth took that experience one step further: towards businesses that could use websites, platforms, automation, AI and other digital tools not as decoration, but as a route to efficiency, new customers and scale.
As Podii co-founder Iryna Shchotkina put it:
“The program’s
main value was the lecturers, mentors and consultants with real practical
experience. The material was not presented as theory that could be found
anywhere online, but as live tools that could be applied the very next day.”
Cohort 1: building the right thing
Thirty women joined the first business model design sprint. Thirteen
businesses continued into the accelerator, and 12 were later selected for
business development support. Their Demo Day in April 2026 showed very
different forms of digital growth: some founders had created new products,
while others had discovered that the smartest decision was to simplify, pivot
or automate an existing business.
For Alina Khoma, founder of Bavka, that meant abandoning an expensive AR idea and redirecting her resources into a digital platform for parents.
“For me, this is probably one of the most valuable outcomes of participating in the program: not simply following the first idea, but recognising in time a stronger model that better meets the real needs of the business and its audience.”
- 23D ART SPACE (Hanna Narutska). A B2B jewellery platform bringing design, 3D modelling, production preparation and digital client tools into one workflow.
- LogoKids (Inna Sudeiko). A mobile app helping parents understand and support early childhood development through personalised exercises and progress tracking.
- AI-Powered Prototyping by StarkSoft (Oryna Starkina). An AI-supported service helping non-technical founders turn an idea into a testable prototype before investing in full development.
- Medway (Maryna Klimchenko). A platform matching patients with relevant clinical trials while helping research centres find suitable participants.
- Podii (Iryna Shchotkina and Liliya Polska). An AI-powered Telegram bot and Mini App helping users discover personalised cultural events in Ukrainian cities.
- AI Sales Coach by ProPersonal (Iryna Repchina). A voice-based AI simulator where sales teams practise customer conversations and receive structured feedback.
- Bavka Montessori Parents Lab (Alina Khoma). A digital Montessori platform for parents, created after the founder pivoted away from a costly AR solution.
- EASE (Iryna Zahrebelna). An online fashion customisation experience combining uploaded artwork, visual previews and dynamic pricing.
- Kavovi Vytrebenky Café Chatbot (Viktoriia Vovchenko). A Telegram-based customer journey with menu access, pre-orders, payments and loyalty tools for a working café.
- ContentPersona (Liliia Uskova). An AI marketing assistant that turns business context into scripts and ready-to-use promotional video content.
- EDUSYNC (Viktoriia Varvariuk). A B2B dashboard combining CRM, LMS and payment data for education businesses, with AI-supported analytics.
- KidsBook (Tetiana Pohrebniuk). A personalised children’s book business using CRM and automation to make orders and customer communication easier to scale.
For Viktoriia Vovchenko, the result was very concrete:
“I came with an idea for a chatbot for my café, Kavovi Vytrebenky, and left with a finished product, new knowledge in technology and business, and grant support that made the launch possible.”
Cohort 2: from concepts to users and customers
The second cohort brought 55 women into the Design Sprint, with 18 teams
advancing to the accelerator and presenting at the second Demo Day on 30 June
2026. Several teams reached Demo Day with evidence beyond a prototype: users,
clients, pilots or a product already embedded in daily business.
- AEO.Bridge.ROI (Oksana Stevens and the All-Ukrainian AEO Club). A SaaS calculator showing how customs authorisations can affect efficiency, profitability and return on investment.
- Cash & Profit (Oksana Ponomarenko). A financial-analysis platform helping SMEs understand performance, model scenarios and make better cash and profit decisions.
- Speakin’Gem LMS (Viktoriia Dubrovina). An AI-powered learning platform for online schools, combining content, student progress and mentor workflows.
- Marketium (Anastasiia Olshanska). A gamified Marketing Alias app for professional learning, team interaction and networking.
- Smart Infrastructure for B2B Sales (Olena Malyhina). A platform that finds relevant companies and decision-makers and generates personalised B2B outreach.
- Small Business Efficiency Centre (Olena Yehorova). A digital diagnostic that assesses a company’s readiness to scale and turns the results into a risk map and 90-day plan.
- AI Lingua (Alona Korchynska. A mobile app creating practical English-learning routes around goals such as interviews, work, study or relocation.
- Я Є / I Am (Olena Vovk). A safety-focused AI companion for young people designed to support reflection and guide users towards real human help.
- Englistry (Mariana Mokrytska). An online English NMT preparation platform with generated tests, automated checking and its first paying users.
- Insightio (Olesia Viietska). A financial analytics tool for small HoReCa businesses, combining sales data, margins, AI recommendations and scenario modelling.
- Dabi Object (Snizhana Temborska). A curated digital platform making Ukrainian homeware and product-design brands easier to discover.
- Synychka Support System (Iryna Yakoniuk). A Telegram bot guiding customers through online craft courses while reducing the amount of manual support required.
- Sadok (Nataliia Kolodynska). A SaaS management system for kindergartens and development centres combining communication, operations and finance, already serving more than 50 active clients.
- Vyroste (Halyna Aksonova). A live gardening platform with a regional planting calendar, verified nurseries and an AI agronomist.
- TEMPO (Daria Lytovchenko). A digital health-support platform for runners, cyclists, swimmers and other endurance athletes.
- StepByStep (Mariia Kataieva and Denys Kataiev). An interactive-video EdTech platform that breaks complex skills into practical steps and gives educators detailed learner analytics.
- Neurodivergent (Mariia Fedorova). Online body-doubling rooms designed to support productivity for adults with ADHD and autism.
- SafeSkills Women Lab (Sofiia Podvalna). A digital personal-safety platform helping women identify relevant skills, training and practical next steps.
Olena Malyhina summed up the pace of development simply:
“In two months of participating in the Tech Driven Growth accelerator, we went from an idea to a working product.”
And for Halyna Aksonova, founder of Vyroste, the shift was personal as well as technical. She entered the programme at 60 with no technical background and serious doubts about whether she belonged there.
“Step by step, with the support of mentors, I went from ‘I don’t know how to do anything’ to ‘I have my own product.’ For me, this is a true new start and an opportunity I received thanks to the program.”
What changed
The program was built around execution, not digitalisation for its own
sake. Across the two cohorts, founders moved from ideas and business
bottlenecks to working MVPs, automated processes, beta users, paying customers
and new client relationships. Just as importantly, some teams learned what not to build -
dropping expensive or unnecessary features, testing demand earlier and putting
their resources into solutions that could actually support growth.
That matters especially in wartime Ukraine. A business that can sell
online, automate routine work, serve customers across regions or operate
through digital channels is less dependent on one location or one disrupted
process. Tech Driven Growth paired that practical digital shift with mentoring
on resilience and mental well-being, recognising that keeping a business moving
through constant uncertainty depends on the founder as much as on the
technology.
The program also created something harder to measure but repeatedly visible during the Demo Days: the right environment around a founder. Mentors challenged assumptions, experts opened new directions, participants learned from one another’s questions, and people who had spent months building side by side became part of each other’s professional networks.
One of the Demo Day experts described the participants not as founders still waiting to prove themselves, but as women whose progress was already worth being proud of - and wished them not only success and inspiration, but the right people around them. That network matters because entrepreneurship does not end with a Demo Day. Building a business is a long-term journey.
Keep building
Behind these 30 products are women who spent months testing ideas, questioning their assumptions, rebuilding parts that did not work and making decisions under circumstances that rarely made entrepreneurship easy.
We saw how far their businesses moved between the first workshops and
the final presentations, and we are genuinely proud of what they built. But
Demo Day was never meant to be a finish line. We want to keep hearing about the
next launches, customers, partnerships and pivots; to keep sharing the
founders’ work when we can; and to meet them again in new programmes, events and
business networks.
So to every woman who joined Tech Driven Growth - whether she finished with a live platform, a better business model, a first user or simply a much clearer next step – congratulations! Keep going. Keep us updated on your progress, and let us keep telling people what you are building.
Tech Driven Growth is implemented by Garage48 in cooperation with Divergent Woman and funded by the Estonian Centre for International Development (ESTDEV).