On December 21, 2025, the SKELAR Veteran Venture Forum was held in Kyiv. After a full cycle of acceleration, veteran entrepreneurs presented their startups at the forum. These are the finalist projects of the first venture incubator for veteran entrepreneurs in Europe.
On December 21, 2025, the SKELAR Veteran Venture Forum was held in Kyiv. After a full cycle of acceleration, veteran entrepreneurs presented their startups at the forum. These are the finalist projects of the first venture incubator for veteran entrepreneurs in Europe.
The Veteran Venture Forum was dedicated to the development of veteran entrepreneurship, tech startups, and support opportunities for military personnel transitioning to the civilian sector. The goal is to strengthen veteran support that unites the business community, government institutions, and partner organizations.
The speakers of the forum were Vlad Ivchenko, SKO SKELAR, Karina Doroshenko, head of the Ukrainian Veterans Fund, Gennady Sukharnikov, serviceman of the 12th Brigade of the Azov Military University, head of the Azov.One Partnerships Department, owner of the Sabotage coffee shop, Oleg Krets, military psychologist, Volodymyr Alekseychenko, CMO Storyby, SKELAR, one of the mentors of the VVP program, and others.
The main event of the forum was the presentation of the finalists of the Veteran Venture Program acceleration program and their technology startups to investors and experts.
SKELAR Veteran Venture Program is the first accelerator in Ukraine created specifically for veterans who want to start their own tech business. The program includes an 8-week practical training intensive, mentoring sessions with SKELAR experts who work directly with Google, Meta and other international partners, pitch days in front of investors and the opportunity to receive investments for the development of the project.
The training covers key aspects of the startup journey: from idea validation and business model building to MVP creation and pitching to potential investors. This includes team building, business model and pricing, financial planning, product and UX/UI development, marketing, and pitching to investors.
The program was supported by such partners as the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, the Ukrainian Veterans Fund, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Startup Fund, the Patronage Service «Yangola» and «Azov Suprovid», the Veteran Hub charity organization, and the Boryviter military school.
In the first wave, the program received 65 applications for participation (only from those working with digital products/services), 25 veterans were selected, 6 moved on to the incubation stage and competed for a grant.
«Veteran capital will become a critically important part of post-war reconstruction. Today we are talking about over a million active military personnel — this is a huge layer of professional, disciplined and managerially mature people. If the state and business do not begin to systematically work on their reintegration now, the country will lose one of the strongest resources for growth,» says Vladyslav Ivchenko, COO SKELAR
The Veteran Venture Forum featured 6 startups that passed all stages of acceleration and received investment grants totaling $44,000 for further development.
These projects from veterans span technology areas, including EdTech, MedTech, and other verticals.
Kvanette is a self-study app for French and English. It helps the user structure their independent language learning.
LiMove is an app that acts as a personal trainer. Using the phone’s internal camera, it analyzes the user’s exercise performance and recognizes the performance in real time and provides feedback on what needs to be corrected.
VetAi diagnostics is an interpretation of general and biochemical blood tests of animals in seconds. This will reduce the burden on the doctor, help young specialists, and reduce the percentage of errors in interpretation.
Kharaktnik 3D is a startup in the field of 3D scanning and personalized manufacturing. It creates realistic 3D figurines and digital 3D avatars of people based on scans. The key idea of the project is to preserve memory and human stories through technology.
Zapyt.auto is a project that helps car owners find spare parts, and sellers receive targeted inquiries. Instead of searching websites, calling, and chatting, the car owner makes a request and receives answers from stores with real prices/availability, etc.
SecuLearn AI is a learning platform that uses gamification to motivate users to learn cybersecurity rules and works with custom security challenges from companies.
The finalists' projects are already moving into the stage of further development.
