Payoneer is built by entrepreneurs with the goal of helping other entrepreneurs succeed, so we have a special place in our hearts for the people that possess the entrepreneurial spirit and passion that leads to success. For the 4th year in a row, the Entrepreneurship Awards are being presented to members of the global Payoneer community who embody our mission and values in their own way to make the world a better place. There is no secret formula or recipe for success, and I am grateful to the 3,500 entrepreneurs from 120 countries who shared their journeys with us – each of your stories inspires us and motivates us to keep working hard to help more small businesses like you make a big impact on the world. Without further ado, it is my honor to present the 7 winners of the 2020 Entrepreneurship Awards. I hope you’ll find their stories as inspiring as we did. Enjoy!
Katerina Trajchevska
CEO Adeva
New York, US
Personally, I want to help inspire people to make a difference and that is why I am an ambassador of the global Women in Tech movement.
About Adeva
Adeva is an exclusive network for developers. We partner with companies to scale engineering teams on demand and on budget. Adeva was created with the vision to bring equal opportunities to developers everywhere. We’re a remote community, built by developers for developers.
Katerina’s Story
Right after graduating, I got a job as the only employee in a local dev shop. After 6 months I felt like I lacked growth opportunities and decided to leave and try myself as a freelancer. That’s when I faced disbelief and judgment from my friends and family — everyone was afraid about my rent and security. They were right to worry; with my 6 months of work experience I picked up small projects over freelance marketplaces that barely paid the bills. They also gave me an enormous and invaluable opportunity to learn and advance my career.
A colleague of mine (now partner at Adeva) joined me in the adventure. We were both inexperienced, so we kept learning by doing. Over time, the projects were much more interesting and there were more and more projects coming in. We finally decided to start a company by onboarding new people and Adeva was born.
When I co-founded Adeva in 2015 as a talent marketplace for remote developers, my goal was simply to bring equal opportunities to developers all around the world. Founders often feel like imposters because they don’t fit in the typical Silicon Valley startup story. At first, we were a digital agency, then we became an “outstaffing company”. We started building offshore teams for clients and a year ago we transformed into a remote engineers’ network. Moving organically and adapting to our customers’ needs as we learned gave us an enormous entrepreneurial edge. Today, our network has 500+ developers from over 20 countries and we work with everyone from exciting startups to established Fortune 500 companies. In the last year alone, we’ve experienced a sales growth of 300% thanks to our ability to work remotely with distributed talent.
Personally, I want to help inspire people to make a difference and that is why I am an ambassador of the global Women in Tech movement. I am also heavily involved in mentoring and other projects and initiatives to help share this inspiration with others. I hope my story can show other entrepreneurs that it is possible to create their own amazing journey. No matter where you are, you can change the world and this award is proof of that.”
Maksim Gopanchuk
Kyiv, Ukraine
Founder KGUbrass
Winning this award has inspired me to open a community for Ukrainian manufacturers to share their experiences.
About KGUbrass
KGUbrass was founded by two musicians from Ukraine in 2004 and started production in 2011. Their goal was to create high-quality wind instruments and custom parts and accessories that help musicians reach new heights with maximum comfort. After discovering a niche gap in the industry, they started growing their product line to the 100+ products offered today.
Maksim’s Story
“I met my co-founder Mikhailo Kuznetsov in 2004 when we studied jazz together at the R.Glier Kyiv Institute of Music. As professional musicians, we can use our industry knowledge to deliver the right products for our market with genuine passion.
Creating custom instrument parts is like creating jewelry, because every detail can not only affect the look of the instrument but the sound as well and we must execute each piece with excellence. Using this dedication to excellence (a Payoneer value) we grew from two students with a dream to established manufacturers whose products are used by Arturo Sandoval, Sergey Nakaryakov, and other famous musicians. All our items are sold on Amazon and eBay and we have a large number of partners around the world. We also work with wholesale customers in England, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and Poland. Our global clients are from the Philippines, China, Japan, USA, Norway, South Africa, Indonesia, Canada, and Australia and comprise both novice musicians and world stars of jazz and classical music. Every year we expand our geography of sales and increase sales by growing our product line. Over the past year, our sales have grown by 200%.
We don’t have direct competition on Amazon or other sites. Many companies stopped producing these products because it was too expensive for them, or they couldn’t deliver the quality that was needed. By offering an affordable price for a unique product of excellent quality, we have secured this niche market for ourselves.
Winning this award has inspired me to open a community for Ukrainian manufacturers to share their experiences. I believe that creating physical products and sending them around the world can be a new way for my fellow Ukrainians and now, thanks to Payoneer, entrepreneurs can take their products to a global market.”
Karen Jackman
Founder of Kindy Ecobaby
Brisbane, Australia
I hope to inspire others not to give up, so I can read about them in future Entrepreneurship Awards.
About Kindy Ecobaby
Kindy Ecobaby is an Australia-based business founded in 2012 that produces environmentally friendly baby products. They have been offering budget-friendly nappies, wipes, bottles, and other products that are kind to you, your family, and the planet! We make it easy and affordable for you to give your baby an organic, healthy, eco-friendly start to life.
Karen’s Story
“I am originally from South Africa and moved to Australia in 1999 and I definitely took the scenic route on my entrepreneurial journey. After a successful 25+ year career in journalism during which I sold my own successful newspaper and reported for several others, I found myself battling Google Ads to sell print ads in my newest project, Kindy News, a newspaper aimed at parents of toddlers. I realized that I already had an engaged audience and instead of hunting for advertisers, maybe I could become one of my own advertisers. What could I distribute through this channel?
I chose eco-friendly products because I felt it was the right thing to do from an ideological perspective and the market was largely untapped. It wasn’t easy and I experienced a lot of trial and error over the first two years but then business started to stabilize. I am proud to share that Kindy Ecobaby currently serves tens of thousands of customers, many of whom are placing multiple orders. I sell in Australia and the USA at present and have temporarily paused my European sales due to the Brexit situation. Sales in Germany were particularly good, so I am looking at focusing on this market in the coming year. I am a top-rated seller on eBay with a 100 percent positive customer rating sustained over the past three years of 3520 genuine positive customer reviews. On Amazon my products have a 4.5/5 star customer rating, and I am a regularly featured “Amazon’s Choice”.
My team works hard with many of the guiding principles that Payoneer follows, such as excellence, inclusion, and action. These values are particularly essential to my customer service approach. I failed many times before I succeeded and winning this award feels like the cherry on top of the sundae that my business has become. I hope to inspire others not to give up, so I can read about them in future Entrepreneurship Awards.”
Chiara Pellacani
CEO of eCharme SRL
Bomporto, Italy
Receiving this award from Payoneer gives us a reason to be even more self-aware and to strive to take the quality of our service beyond.
About eCharme
eCharme is an eCommerce brand that offers a complete assortment of prestigious national and international Haute Perfumery and Cosmetics brands. Each season, their expert buyers offer a complete selection in line with the eCharme philosophy: wide, refined and attentive to the latest trends and innovations in the sector.
Chiara’s Story
“Before joining Echarme, I used to work for another company as a general manager. Although it was a completely different type of business, some tasks were similar, and this experience personally allowed me to build my character and to become confident in my skills. eCharme was founded back in 2014 with a relatively small selection of 2000 products. To date, our product portfolio has grown to 10.000+ high quality items. A great variety of products, competitive prices, great customer service support and on-time delivery sets our shop apart from the other ones.
My vision was to make popular brands of perfume and cosmetics available to the Italian market at competitive prices. I invested in a warehouse in Modena, Italy to store all my items and since then eCharme has grown steadily along with our amazing 12-person team.
They say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and they are right! Last year the company experienced a 45% increase in sales, and they are expected to grow in the future. We actually serve more than 200,000 customers within Europe, but our objective is to expand our business overseas. Our company is regularly featured as an Amazon top rated seller, and we are often included in their pilot projects.
We put passion and humility into everything we do, and I think these values are an important part of our success. Receiving this award from Payoneer gives us a reason to be even more self-aware and to strive to take the quality of our service beyond. It’s truly incredible to see how the power of community and entrepreneurship can drive such wonderful results. You just have to start!”
Yan ChunYue
VP Tianjin Heli International Trade Co., Ltd
TianJin, China
eCommerce is an emerging and ever-evolving industry and there is no textbook from which to learn from. It’s a team effort!
About Tianjin Heli International Trade
Tianjin Heli International Trade Co., Ltd. is located in Tianjin, China. We are a cross-border eCommerce company specializing in the production and sales of home and sports items.
Yan’s Story
“I was in the traditional B2B business for more than 10 years when I decided to change career and enter the cross-border e-commerce world! So in 2015 I founded Tianjin Heli. In an era of economic globalization and technological advance, coupled with the reform in state-owned enterprises, traditional foreign trade companies are faced with more and more challenges. That’s where Tianjin Heli has made our mark. We are a start-up that has successfully transformed from a traditional factory to a cross-border e-commerce company, similar to what many other Chinese companies have done. By starting to sell and then expanding our global business through Amazon, we have been able to reach out to overseas consumers. We now sell into the US and European markets.
In order to develop sustainably, we have innovated our ways of doing business and reorganized our resources. At the beginning of our online journey, we had no idea how to operate an online store. I tirelessly asked my friends and other sellers for advice, wrote down every piece of important information, thought about it constantly and applied the relevant experiences to my day-to-day. Slowly but surely, and with much trial and error, I learnt how to operate a successful online business. And we had our fair share of challenges! When our master account was banned, we adjusted our promotion strategies swiftly, and promptly communicated with the marketplace. When we discovered that all our packages were too big to be shipped due our lack of knowledge in cross-border logistics, we tried our best to minimize the losses by repacking products and readjusting our plans.
Although there have been some twists and turns, we’ve seen a huge growth across all our stores over the last few years. With a compound growth rate of over 50% and a GMV that increased by 41% last year, we have successfully gained a foothold in this industry and have completed our transformation from traditional foreign trade to cross border eCommerce.
I take this award from Payoneer as a recognition of our achievements and values. What matters most to me is being tolerant of different opinions in the team, so that the team can continue to innovate and go further. eCommerce is an emerging and ever-evolving industry and there is no textbook from which to learn from. It’s a team effort!”
Luiz Eduardo Figueiredo
Owner of Divisio
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
I always remember my team that anyone can learn to code but very few can learn to listen, to care and build something meaningful.
About Divisio
Divisio is a software development company founded in 2013 with the simple but important goal of making a positive impact on people’s lives through good code. Only 1% of the population can write good code despite all of us interacting with code every day. Everyone deserves good code.
Luiz’s Story
“When I got my first job, I knew nothing about coding. I was hired to manage some spreadsheets, fix printers and small computer problems. Despite my lack of knowledge, I quickly realized that the company I was working on was not using technology at all to solve its internal business flow, so I asked my boss to buy me some PHP books. I wanted to learn how to code so I could build software that would solve his problems. The opportunity he gave me was the first step of my entrepreneurial journey and I didn’t even know it yet.
I studied a lot and really loved programming from day one. I eventually created the software to help my company. They used it for 6 years and then hired me again to develop a new version that they still use today. Coding has changed my life forever, because that’s when I realized that I could actually help companies to become a better and more efficient business.
I’ve realized that I had the power bring ideas to life, to solve big problems, to make the world a better place and that’s how Divisio was really born. We love to make good code accessible for companies by developing web & mobile apps, consulting, and being outsourced by clients. Last year we grew 465%, working with clients from South America, North America, Europe and Australia. To keep up, we tripled the size of our developer team and together we are setting our mark as a triple-A software development company. When we are hiring at Divisio I always remember my team that anyone can learn to code but very few can learn to listen, to care and build something meaningful. And that’s our top priority, to find and work with people that deeply care.”
Siva Balakrishnan
Founder of Vserve Ebusiness Solutions
Coimbatore, India
This award will validate the efforts of our team and our unique method of reaching out to small businesses around the world.
About Vserve Ebusiness Solutions
With over a decade of experience in the most crucial marketing solutions, Vserve Ebusiness Solutions provides quality services to all small business needs. Our services range from talented virtual assistants (VAs) and team members, to a variety of web design, online marketing, content creation, development, and customer support solutions.
Siva’s Story
“I started Vserve right after college. I come from a family in Coimbatore and I am the first person in the IT industry in my family. During the initial days, we were focused only on a few B2B customers doing data analysis and graphic design. We found that growth was slow, and we always had pressure on our pricing from competition as our differentiation was very limited in this segment.
In 2017, we decided to focus on small businesses in the USA and Europe and provide VA services to these customers. We felt the time was right as the small businesses were growing but faced many challenges including finding the right people. We are growing at 35%+ CAGR in the last three years with this new focus and our 300-person organization helps small and mid-size businesses grow and prosper through outsourcing non value-added tasks to our VAs.
Vserve is a people company and believes our success will only be possible through our people. Our attrition is one of the lowest as we believe in really engaging our employees and making them feel they are part of our family. This has led to a customer satisfaction rating of 4.7+ out of 5 and customer retention of 96% in the last three years. We also have a strong ESOP plan for our employees.
This award will validate the efforts of our team and our unique method of reaching out to small businesses around the world. We’ll continue to deliver incredible outsourcing experiences to grow our industry and help small businesses succeed.”
Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who participated!