What continues to fascinate me about Ukrainian startups and scaleups is their ability to solve problems for other countries — problems many of those countries are still struggling to fix.
From edtech and lifelong learning to mental health, cybersecurity, and HR, Ukrainian founders are building globally relevant solutions shaped by constraint, resilience, and deep technical skill.
Take Brighterly (edtech), Headway (lifelong learning), Pleso Therapy (mental health support), Stackbob.ai (enterprise IAM) and PeopleForce (HR). All of these companies are addressing systemic challenges at scale.
Kyiv-founded health product marketplace Liki24 fits squarely into this pattern. Its ambition is unapologetically European: to build the continent’s leading health marketplace across fragmented pharmacy markets.
But that ambition was tested earlier — and harder — than most startups ever face. Founded in Kyiv, the company has navigated COVID, war, and investor flight, emerging with 70 per cent of its revenue now coming from the EU and €19 million in funding since its founding in 2017.
I sat down with Anton Avrynskyi, CEO and co-founder at IT Arena in Lviv, earlier this year to learn all about it.
How Liki24 lets customers trade speed for price in healthcare
Liki24 is a marketplace for health products. It connects sellers with buyers of physical health products — medicines, supplements, vitamins, medical cosmetics, and OTC drugs.
Liki24 operates as a marketplace that aggregates products from multiple pharmacies and optimises for price, speed, and availability. A customer, for example, may choose from:
- Delivery in one hour from a local pharmacy,
- Next-day delivery from within the country, or
- Delivery from another EU country at a much lower prices.
Besides Ukraine, its present in 10 European countries and the UK. And, the model was shaped by a very personal frustration Avrynskyi had experienced years earlier.
A mid-career leap: how Anton Avrynskyi walked away from stability to fix a broken pharmacy market
Anton Avrynskyi is from Kyiv, Ukraine. He studied computer science at Kyiv Polytechnic University and, from his second year, began working at a tech company that developed and implemented ERP systems for large enterprises and corporations. He went from developer to project manager, then head of the project department, and eventually became a shareholder and the company's CEO.
After 15 years, he started thinking that he wanted to build a big international interest. He walked away from the company and sold his shares without fully knowing what he would do next, a leap that highlights how much harder risk-taking becomes for founders with families and long-built careers.
Avrynskyi admits,
“It was a big risk. At the time, I had two kids — one was four years old, the other just one — and my wife. She asked me, “What are you doing?” But she supported me, which was incredibly important. I understood that if I didn’t leave, I would stay there for the rest of my life.
My biggest internal fear was losing motivation and internal drive.”
He spent a few months in the US with his family, attended many conferences, and saw how fast digital health was growing. At that time, Avrynskyi remembered the problem he faced in Ukraine when his children were born:
There were huge price differences for the same medicines between pharmacies — sometimes two or three times; lack of availability — you couldn’t buy everything you needed in one place; and inconvenient or impossible delivery of everything in one order.
He realised that the US hadn’t cracked this problem, so he decided to create a solution in Ukraine.
He asked former colleagues from his previous company to join him and started the company in mid-2017, about half a year after exiting his previous business. Things moved fast.
He recalled:
“We built an MVP very quickly, saw good traction within a few months, and then I was invited to Austria to present the company.
We won a startup competition there. After that, we raised our first funding round of €1 million. Two years later, COVID hit — and our growth accelerated dramatically, as demand for remote access surged. During that period, we raised a €5 million round led by Horizon Capital.
That’s when we began executing the company’s full-scale vision.”
From investor pause to European expansion
By the end of 2021, just months before the full-scale invasion, Liki24 was experiencing strong growth and had already begun fundraising.
But as geopolitical tensions escalated, that momentum stalled. By mid-December, investor conversations abruptly paused. “We had great numbers and a clear direction, but Ukraine was suddenly seen as too high risk,” he says.
“Everyone was talking about the possibility of war.” When the team re-engaged investors in April 2022, the message was consistent — and blunt. “They told us, ‘Let’s talk only when more than half of your business is outside Ukraine.’
Some said it directly, others said it more carefully, but the reason was obvious.”
At the time, around 97 per cent of the company’s business was still inside Ukraine, with international operations not yet financially sustainable.
“From an investor perspective, it was absolutely fair. The risk was simply too high.”
How Liki24 mobilised medicines for a country at war
On 24 February 2022, Avrynskyi was in Kyiv with his family. He recalls:
“We woke up to bombs. During the first two weeks of the war, more than 80 per cent of pharmacies were closed — not because products weren’t available, but because pharmacists had fled."
Just a day later, Liki24 created a free map of open pharmacies across Ukraine. Almost 2 million Ukrainians used it in the first two weeks. Then the team expanded it so that people could find pharmacies that actually had the medicines they needed.
However, Liki24 also observed that when supply chains were disrupted, people began facing shortages of essential products.
Fortunately, during that time, Avrynskyi received many messages from international friends saying, “We’ll send you everything you need — just tell us what’s missing.”
Friends from Greece, Turkey, and France sent entire trucks — big trucks — filled with medicines, an incredible range of much-needed medications.
Avrynskyi explained:
“We created three logistics centres and sorted everything. It was extremely hard because product names differed across languages, and dosages were sometimes different.
We worked with more than 50 volunteer pharmacists and built a platform that allows Ukrainians to order exactly the medicines they need for free.
This was crucial — medicine requires precision. In total, we distributed around $5 million worth of medication and helped more than half a million Ukrainians.”
However, the project was a victim of its own success. Healthcare organisations told them that free humanitarian medicine was hurting local pharmacies' finances.
So they changed the model, asking international partners to send money instead of medicines, created an NGO, and upgraded the platform so Ukrainians in need could upload documents and order what they needed — donations covered around half the cost.
“This way, we supported local pharmacies and helped around one million Ukrainians. Donors could see exactly where every euro went via an online dashboard.”
Business survival vs humanitarian responsibility
However, what made the situation especially complex was that the business was operating on two fronts at once: running a company while simultaneously responding to a humanitarian crisis.
“On the outside, it was a 24/7 charity effort. Inside the company, there was still a business that had to survive — with a team to support and salaries to pay.”
But while still running humanitarian operations, Liki24 focused on European expansion — Romania first, then Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. While many companies focus on their US for growth, according to Avrynskyi:
“Europe is underestimated. Over 500 million people, fragmented markets, and around $400 billion in pharmacy sales — larger than the US. Fragmentation is our advantage.
Our goal is to become Europe’s leading health marketplace.”
By 2023, 35 to 40 per cent of revenue came from the EU. Today, it’s 70 per cent. Revenue in Ukraine has still grown twofold since the invasion, and Liki24 raised €9 million this year, bringing its total funding to €19 million.
AI under the hood: product matching, logistics, and support at scale
AI was a key enabler of making European scale possible and plays a major role across three key areas at Liki24: Product mapping. Avrynskyi explained:
“There are thousands of sellers, each with thousands of products, often the same products with different names. We use machine learning to match them accurately.”
So the company used AI for three specific needs:
Product mapping: Thousands of sellers, each with thousands of products, often the same products with different names. Likl24 uses machine learning to accurately match them.
Logistics: Traditional carriers failed for cross-border delivery—slow and expensive.
“We broke logistics into local segments and built an AI delivery agent that chooses the optimal chain. This cut delivery times sevenfold and costs fivefold.”
Customer support: Liki24 reduced its support team from 80 to about 40 people while expanding to more countries, using AI-driven multilingual support available 24/7.
The company also uses AI for recommendations, marketing, and B2B pharma advertising—without sharing personal data.
But this is not the end of innovation for Liki24. The company launched a lab test marketplace and a health coaching platform focused on prevention.
“People do regular blood tests, track trends, and receive personalised health plans. It’s especially valuable for expats navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems. Eventually, everything will connect: diagnostics, coaching, doctor access, and product delivery via Liki24,” shared Avrynskyi.
Avrynskyi stresses that readers should support Ukraine — not only through aid but also by supporting Ukrainian businesses.
“Ukraine should not be seen only as a country in need, but as a country that creates value and innovation.
Our story shows that even during war, it’s possible to build and scale international companies."
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