Spotting business issues before they emerge. How a Ukrainian startup DataLight works

In our recurring Who Are These People segment, Vector offers founders an opportunity to discuss their projects, covering aspects such as their products, marketing strategies, monetisation, investments, and plans. The focus this time is on DataLight, a Ukrainian startup offering a web platform for real-time data analysis and AI-driven insights into new trends and anomalies, helping companies minimise losses and accelerate growth.

Vector’s editor-in-chief Yuliia Tkach interviewed Kateryna Bozhko, CEO and co-founder, about the product’s features, promotion, investments, and plans.

Conception

DataLight has three co-founders. 

• Kateryna Bozhko, CEO. Having a business background and a Master’s degree in Business and Finance from the Kyiv School of Economics, she worked as a business analyst prior to founding the startup. Her experience includes working as a sales analyst for Purina and Nestle, followed by a role as a business analyst in IT companies.
• Dmytro Miedviediev, CPO.Tech Lead Data Engineer at SKELAR and currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Data Science at Ukrainian Catholic University. 
• Danylo Vanin, СТО. DevOps & Systems Engineer at EPAM, with a Master’s in Computer Science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

The founders have known each other for over five years, having studied together at Mohylianka: Dmytro and Danylo, fellow students in Computer Science, and Kateryna, who pursued studies in Economics. Curiosity about startups led them to dive into the industry to find out more. Danylo played a role in the organisation of IT Arena during 2023 and 2024. He introduced his friends to the Startup School incubator run by Startup Depot, and in February 2024, they decided to apply with a proposal that grew out of Dima’s insights — to improve how business stakeholders use analytics. 

He realised the worth of data in decision-making, and the steep cost of mistakes when business processes aren’t tracked — where every minute has a financial implication Through interviews and research, the concept transformed into enhancing how companies observe their operations and optimising their workflows. «Basically, the idea was to reduce financial leakage and the profits businesses don’t make due to delayed understanding of the triggers», — Kateryna says. 

In March, just a month later, the team applied for ideasLab, a student acceleration programme offered by CfE Accelerator UCU (currently known as Ideas Centre UCU). They received their first grant funding at that point, and the story of DataLight began in the spring of 2024.

The team’s objective is to engineer an AI agent that can detect irregularities in business operations, check hypotheses about their root causes, and suggest remedial actions.

Katia has been fully focused on her work with the startup since autumn 2024. The team aims to begin expanding this summer: they will be seeking Full Stack engineers and are also open to project-based collaborations with UX/UI specialists.

Product and audience

DataLight is a web platform that provides real-time data analysis and AI-driven insights into new trends and anomalies, empowering companies to minimise losses and boost growth. 

The co-founder states that their plug-and-play solution enables users to connect data sources and receive initial results in up to 15 minutes. The team’s MVP is already available, allowing customers to connect a data source (Google Analytics) and automatically analyse past data to find trends and anomalies. Drawing on the learned patterns for each metric, DataLight monitors changes in real-time and sends notifications via a Slack channel or email. 

«Our product’s core element is its in-house analytical engine, designed to track all metric segments and decrease the risk of overlooking a problem. Operating on a 5-minute check cycle, any shift in processes or downtime of service is detected near-instantaneously, allowing users to promptly see the consequences of their decisions. 

Our objective is not merely to spot anomalies and trends but to also elucidate their origins. This involves our search for interdependencies between business processes, such as the effect of marketing or development on product metrics. We integrate quantitative metric analysis with unstructured contextual data sourced from chats, documentation, and previous incidents. 

Rather than reinventing the wheel for every issue, our system gathers historical knowledge and business context to offer recommendations. By combining ML models with the strengths of Generative AI, we aim to provide teams with valuable insights, reduce false positives, and ultimately save time and financial resources.

The startup is already collaborating with representatives from several Ukrainian companies who are ready to test the product, such as Mykhailo Horobtsov, CPO at YouControl, and Oleksandr Linnyk, Product Manager at JatApp. 

Once established in Ukraine, their plan is to expand to international markets, with the US as a priority. «We estimate the market size to be $1,27 billion in Tier 1 countries, of which 70% is attributed to the United States». 

DataLight’s key demographic is digital companies that handle hundreds of thousands of events within their products (such as downloads, purchases, views, etc.). Kateryna explains that their focus is on companies with “operationally-intensive processes” that are keen to quickly discover new trends in how their users behave and to be certain of their product’s operational stability.

The team is currently focused on two segments: eCommerce and IT product-based companies. “Within eCommerce, clients encounter revenue losses stemming from operational inefficiencies such as cart abandonment, drops in conversion rates, and challenges with customer retention. A key requirement for IT product-based companies is a deep insight into user behaviour coupled with effective risk management to secure stable growth».

Business model and marketing strategy

DataLight is a typical B2B SaaS. The startup is set to launch its first pilot projects with Ukrainian companies in May and is currently working on monetising its product. Clients can choose a mixed pricing structure: a monthly subscription for the basic options and usage-based transactions for any additional amount of data analysed. The team is exploring monetisation strategies and pricing models: the anticipated starting price is $400 per month.

«A key element of our go-to-market strategy is a partnership with Google (we’ve already had discussions with their representatives and plan to explore collaboration further once we have a more robust product, beyond the MVP stage). Partnerships with international acceleration programmes will also be tested by offering our solution as a perk for the startups they support. Going forward, we will be incorporating SEO, Paid Search, and LinkedIn Ads». 

Investments 

According to the founder, the startup has received an investment of about a thousand dollars from the founders’ own funds. The team raised UAH 200,000 in grant funds by participating in the ideasLab student acceleration programme offered by Ideas Centre UCU, and $25,000 from Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund on the Mission Possible’s demo day. 

Their plan is to attract investment over the next 6 to 12 months.

Plans

«Our main priority at the moment is developing the product, expanding the number of pilot projects, and onboarding our first paying clients by the end of the second quarter. Following that, our plan is to scale up by increasing our public visibility, expanding the team, and boosting sales, with a seed round planned later for quicker growth. Their long-term vision involves expanding to international markets, with a focus on the United States. We are also looking into the UK and Canadian markets. 

We see acceleration programmes such as YC as a beneficial entry point into these markets at our current stage», — summarised the co-founder.