AltexSoft Celebrates 15th Anniversary Maturing as an International Business

AltexSoft is 15! AltexSoft, a Travel & Hospitality Technology Consulting company turns 15!  The company has come a long way, from their beginning as a small, family-type software engineering business in Kharkiv, Ukraine, to an international company with 300+ people working from 25 countries worldwide. 

The team says that they would typically do a fancy feature story to celebrate this occasion, just like this one that they did when the company turned 11. But this time is so different, as Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, home to many members of AltexSoft team. 

Despite all that, they’d like to share some memorable milestones and a bit more about how the team has celebrated. 

15 years of AltexSoft 

2007, AltexSoft was founded in Kharkiv. Interestingly, AltexSoft was founded and refounded three times during a single year with a team of 10. It got off to a good start as the company was shaping its values that defined further growth. 

2009, R&D office in Sievierodonetsk. Now it has 36 employees and the first of many forays beyond Kharkiv. 

2012, R&D office in Kremenchuk and AltexSoft Lab. With 64 employees, AltexSoft expands to a city on the Dnipro River and launches a trainee program, AltexSoft Lab, backed by a local university. 

2013, Business Development office in San Diego, CA. The company now has 82 people and gets closer to their clients in the US. 

2014, R&D office in Lviv and AI Ukraine launch. A beautiful historic city in the West of Ukraine — and one of the major IT hubs — now has an AltexSoft office as the company’s workforce totals 100+ employees and counting. That same year they launched AI Ukraine, an international machine learning and data science conference, poised to become one of the largest AI events in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. 

2017, The company’s major focus is travel technology consulting. It seems that they’ve been a travel tech company from the start. But the strategic decision happened in 2017 as the team analyzed the market and gained enough domain experience to create a TravelTech Competence Center. It consists of engineers, product managers, and business development professionals with travel tech backgrounds. 

2019, Business Development office in Atlanta, GA. Atlanta is a major logistics and travel hub in the US, so a fitting location puts the company in proximity to their East Coast clients. 

2021, well… many things!

Opening an R&D office in Tbilisi, Georgia. The team sees untapped potential in Georgia. With its actively growing IT community, Georgia becomes the first country outside Ukraine to have an AltexSoft R&D office. 

Acquiring DA-14. Buying a software development company is their first acquisition experience — a small step for the IT industry, one giant leap for AltexSoft — as the team learns to accommodate new engineering talent with their own portfolio of partnerships. 

Hiring remotely in Armenia & Azerbaijan. Now the team is well over 250 people and starts hiring people remotely in previously untapped but promising locations, expanding their multi-cultural team. The COVID pandemic helped them refine remote work processes, move the entire infrastructure to a cloud, and learn how to have parties over Zoom and Teams. 

2022, staying strong and now operating from 25 countries! February 24 changed everything for the company. With about 200 people working from Kharkiv, one of the cities most heavily hit by Russia’s brutal war, they run a massive operation to evacuate as many employees and their families as possible. In a matter of two weeks, about 92 percent of AltexSoft staff was evacuated to safe locations. All in all, the company managed to move 1,500 people from the war zone and continue operations. 

Today, they work from the West of Ukraine, the EU, the US, Turkey, and many more places. The company starts hiring in Japan, India, and even Australia. Now AltexSoft numbers about 300 employees. 

Operating from 25 countries, they’re officially an international business with quite a lot of work ahead: new people, new offices, a lot of travel, diversity, and further growth. 

Here is a video for you to sum things up. 

How the team celebrated, not only spending money but raising it 

Instead of getting together at some resort and throwing a party, AltexSoft ran a fundraising auction and managed to collect more than $27,000. The money goes to support the Ukrainian military, aid humanitarian efforts, and save animals. 

It was the first online celebration event for the team as they gathered across multiple locations around the world to greet each other and auction several cool lots. 

Most of the lots came from their employees: a bottle of homemade Georgian wine, portrait work, anniversary AltexSoft postage stamps, personal workout training from a professional athlete, and even legal consultation were among the things that they fiercely bid on. Additionally, the team auctioned two works by famous Ukrainian artist Gamlet Zinkivskyi. Great investments for the future!

Source: AltexSoft