Uklon is a product IT company that develops an ecosystem of ride-hailing services. Uklon's mission is to change urban's life culture through technical solutions for everyday challenges.
Uklon is a product IT company that created the eponymous online ride-hailing service. The company has 11 innovative products based on microservice architecture using cloud computing:
The Uklon team in Ukraine consists of more than 500 specialists, 200 of them are in IT department. The company is developing and entering international markets. It is available in the Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan markets. Uklon has its R&D department and mapping service. It also uses artificial intelligence.
Uklon was launched as an additional project of the IT company Evos. It was engaged in the development of software for taxis. It was supposed to solve the problems of taxi users at that time — ordering a car by making a phone call. Uklon was launched on March 25, 2010, and became the first service in Ukraine for hailing a car via a mobile application. By the way, the American Uber appeared just a year earlier — in 2009. The name Uklon is an abbreviation of the name of the Internet portal Ukraine Online. The first car was hailed there.
Four co-founders worked on the service at the beginning of the company's development. Dmytro Dubrovskyi was the CEO, Viktoriia Dubrovska was the CFO, Serhii Smus was in charge of sales, and 21-year-old Vitalii Diatlenko was responsible for product development.
Being a small online service, we were able to build a company with more than 500 specialists. Today, we build a new urban culture, create a convenient service for millions of riders and drivers within the country, and work for Ukrainian victory.
More than 11.5 million users have already downloaded the application for riders. Every month, Uklon clients in Ukraine make more than four million trips.
Team. Uklon is a community of experts. Their work is based on responsibility and the ability to cooperate effectively.
Innovations. The framework of the company's work is to generate new ideas, test hypotheses, and use the latest technology stack.
Ambitious challenges. Uklon strives to learn new things and surpass itself to drive the industry.
Result. Each role is essential in achieving common goals. Flexibility, quality, and speed of decision-making are behind the team's success.
Uklon puts a high value on its employees and clients. Everyday we work to ensure that each team member grows professionally and sees their contribution to the development of the product and the company as a whole. We have already achieved a lot. We provided a rapid development of the company, offered new products, and expanded our business.
In Uklon, everyone determines their convenient schedule. The main thing is to be in touch during business hours: from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The team members may also work offline or online from any spot in Ukraine and abroad. For those living in Kyiv, the company rents a co-working space with comfortable workplaces, meeting rooms, showers, and sleeping pods.
Uklon’s team members have 20 days off for personal needs and ten paid sick days. The employees can take additional days off on their birthdays and to donate blood. All Uklon team members, even those who work abroad, have free corporate health insurance.
Most people in the team follow the approach called a conplan. It is a mix of Scrum and Kanban work planning systems. Each department and employee has defined OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), but teams maintain a significant level of flexibility. Once every few months, an All Hands meeting is held. One of the top-managers talks about the company, and shares results, news, and plans. In addition, there are separate product development meetings for discussing plans.
In Uklon, initiatives are highly encouraged. For instance, anyone can offer their idea to improve an existing product or create a new at the Best Ideas Challenge. If the idea is relevant, the initiator will receive gifts and support in the project tasks within the company or as a separate startup.
The corporate culture in Uklon is built on expertise and trust. The company holds a lot of different events, team building, and sports events. Thanks to them, we can contribute to and support the country. A lot of employees have friendly and warm relationships. Everyone will always find someone to have a cup of coffee with, talk to at lunchtime, or run six km in winter, (it can also be the CEO).
The company organizes internal training, workshops, hackathons, English lessons, etc. Periodically, Uklon experts undergo public speaking training from Dmytro Buzovskyi, and first aid courses (especially during wartime).
Everyone has access to the corporate library and learning resources. The company usually holds events where experts share their experience and skills with the team. There is an opportunity to attend external educational programs where company speakers may take part in. There are also business school training programs organized for C-level experts and middle managers.
In addition, each member of the Uklon team has an individual training budget. This money can be spent on courses that will be beneficial to their professional development.
I like that I can choose the training and fascinating spheres of development I want. I underwent five or six courses: training in analytics, negotiation, product management, and product strategy development. It is great to have the opportunity to learn, apply knowledge in practice, and see how it affects team and business results.
Uklon values the expertise and experience of each specialist, so it takes care of their career development within the company. Everyone can try themselves in different directions and departments, and change their position if they wish.
At first, a lot of people without work experience become part of the Call Center Team. Then, they become IT specialists or Back Office workers. Experts can also switch from one IT project to another if they wish. Almost all positions provide vertical growth from Junior to Senior specialist or Team Leader. Given that Uklon has started opening branches in other countries, there is an opportunity to gain experience working with foreign markets as well.
With the start of the full-scale invasion, Uklon continued holding most of the corporate events but changed the focus. Currently, the vast majority of events are aimed at charity and fundraising. Until 2022, the company arranged large-scale corporate parties twice a year. Nowadays, Uklon spends funds set aside for these events on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In addition, the company pays a lot of attention to volunteering. For instance, team members join the initiative of the charitable foundation Enjoying Life and take part in distributing dinners to the elderly, as well as purchasing and bringing food to animal shelters, collecting and sending books to orphanages, becoming blood donors, etc.
However, Uklon team members do not forget about joint leisure. It helps to relax the body and soul and restore strength for productive work. The following events are organized for the team:
Another common passion of the Uklon team members is sports. The company has sports sections for football and yoga. Tennis tournaments, cycling days, outdoor yoga in the park and fly-yoga, SUP surfing (before the full-scale war, met the dawn together), street workouts, and Uklon running days (races on Trukhaniv Island) are often held. The team also participates in charity races from Run Ukraine and others.
Since 2014, the company has provided systematic assistance to the Ukrainian army and cooperates with the Come Back Alive Foundation. Uklon regularly donate. In 2022, the company transferred approximately UAH 9.5 million to foundations supporting the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The application has added one-time and regular donation functions to attract the community of Uklon riders to charity. In addition, the company provides all the necessary ammunition and medicines to the team members who protect the country on the front line and keeps the compensation for them.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the company launched the #UklonVolunteer project. It is an initiative that helps provide logistics for foundations, the Armed Forces, employees of critical enterprises, etc. During the 360 days of the project's existence, more than 42,000 volunteer trips were made, and more than 140 charitable organizations were involved. The support of #UklonVolunteer cost more than UAH 16 million (users donate about UAH 2 million).
In 2022, the company joined the United Nations Global Compact. It started dealing with climate change, making cities livable and sustainable, ensuring a healthy lifestyle and safe movement, providing decent working conditions, and influencing the economic development of the country.
In April 2023, the company provided its customers with a new car class Inclusive for those who use a wheelchair. In three months, the drivers made more than 1,500+ trips in Kyiv and the surrounding area. Uklon plans to provide this car class in other cities as well in the future.
I am excited by the opportunity to collaborate with a strong, motivated team on projects that, without exaggeration, change the world. Social initiatives are an essential part of Uklon. The co-founders widely support them. It is cool to be involved in and develop such big and important projects as launch of inclusive car, fundraising for purchasing ‘Furious birds’, helping the National Police search for missing children, etc.
On February 24, 2022, the company granted everyone a paid weekend until the end of the week. During this time, people could move to safer regions of Ukraine or go abroad if they wished. Also, on the first day of the full-scale invasion, Uklon paid a February month reimbursement in full to all team members.
The HR department quickly launched the hr.help project. It helped teammates find accommodation, transport and solved all problems related to moving between cities. The team members found a new place to live for themselves and their families extremely fast.
In addition, the company tried to support people morally and provide them with relevant information. It provided meetings with a psychologist, Ukrainian language lessons to help those who wanted to learn Ukrainian, time management classes, webinars on the history of Ukraine, the celebration of Vyshyvanka Day, etc.
Also, Uklon always supports the children of its teammates, so it holds workshops for them and gives gifts for the holidays. In particular, those who are currently abroad.
Expectations for the hard and soft skills of candidates vary depending on the business needs of each role.
Junior specialists need minimal commercial experience to perform simple tasks with the support of more experienced teammates. Middle specialists should be able to perform simple or typical tasks involving more in-depth knowledge and skills than Junior Specialists. Senior specialists will need to conduct qualitative process analysis, see what can be improved, and act as a leader in these improvements. In addition, they need to be a mentor for less experienced people on the team.
It is also essential that the future teammate's values coincide with the company's values. Independence, responsibility, initiative, desire to work for results, and communication skills are valued here.
Great advice for everyone who wants to increase their chances of joining the Uklon team is to find out as much information as possible about the company before talking to a recruiter. After all, plenty of people think that Uklon is just an application for hailing a taxi. The company has 11 IT products.
Uklon often looks for .Net Engineers, QA Manual Engineers, Business Analysts, lawyers, financiers, and marketers.
Candidate selection also varies according to the position.
The hiring process is always prescribed in the job description, so the candidate knows what to expect.
After accepting the offer, the specialists receive comprehensive support from their People Partner, who provides the newcomer with everything necessary for comfortable task implementation and dealing with work issues. In addition to the People Partner, each new team member gets a mentor. The mentor helps to make the adaptation process comfortable. There are also regular one-to-one meetings with the manager.
I liked the company at once. HR explained the requirements ahead of time, asked about my expectations, and described the selection procedure in detail. I felt that I was respected. I saw goodwill and real interest in me as a candidate.
The feedback after the interview was provided quickly. Overall, it took three working days from the initial communication to the offer. Specifically, the test reflected the nature of future tasks accurately. Another noteworthy aspect is that the company has a successful onboarding system for newcomers. During the collaboration, everyone realizes that the selection process, including all communication, reflects the company's values in full.
In the beginning, the manager outlines the main tasks and desired outcomes that the person should achieve. The decision regarding further collaboration will be made later. This period typically lasts from three to six months. Everything depends on the job position. During the first working day, the team members are given a power kit (branded power bank) as a gift ⚡
