Service Station «Silpo» E-commerce & Ecosystem Igor Drozd spoke about the successful experience of implementing vibecoding, which allowed the company to abandon third-party software worth tens of thousands of dollars. Thanks to the involvement of AI, the junior developer created an MVP Help Desk system in just three months.
Service Station «Silpo» E-commerce & Ecosystem Igor Drozd spoke about the successful experience of implementing vibecoding, which allowed the company to abandon third-party software worth tens of thousands of dollars. Thanks to the involvement of AI, the junior developer created an MVP Help Desk system in just three months.
The top manager spoke about this at Forbes AI Day, Forbes Ukraine reports. According to him, the main motivation for the experiment was the limitations of SaaS models: the high cost of customization and the inability of contractors to quickly implement the necessary changes.
To implement the project, the company chose an unconventional approach: they recruited a support specialist who aspired to become a developer. They provided him with a technical mentor and AI tools for writing code. As a result, the junior developer created an MVP of the system in just three months.
«Under the close supervision of a mentor, the junior developer created an MVP of the Help Desk system in three months. In six months, we launched it into production and abandoned expensive software,» noted Igor Drozd.
The finished SaaS solution, including improvements, cost the company $50,000 per year, while developing its own software cost $17,728. In addition to the financial benefit, the retailer gained full control over the product, which allowed it to no longer adapt business processes to someone else’s code.
Drozd also refuted the thesis that ready-made solutions always guarantee a quick start. He emphasized that writing TOR, testing and integrating third-party software often take years. Instead, AI allows Product Owners to create clickable prototypes and clearly demonstrate the desired result to the IT team, turning development into a CAPEX investment that increases the capitalization of the organization.
As a reminder, as of March 2026, Silpo’s IT division, which serves a number of businesses of the parent Fozzy Group, has over 40 product teams or over 500 IT specialists. Half of them are engaged in customer services, the rest — in the retailer’s internal systems.
