AltexSoft Celebrates 15th Anniversary Maturing as an International Business

July 29, 2022 — AltexSoft is 15! AltexSoft, a Travel & Hospitality Technology Consulting company turns 15! Just let it sink in. We’ve come a long way, from our beginning as a small, family-type software engineering business in Kharkiv, Ukraine to an international company with 300+ people working from 25 countries worldwide. 

Typically, we would do a fancy feature story to celebrate this occasion, just like this one that we did when we turned 11. But this time is so different, as Russia continues its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, home to many of us, we decided to be a bit more subdued. By the way, our designer who created the infographics now serves in the military defending Ukraine. So, he’s a bit busy. 

Despite all that, we’d like to share some memorable milestones and a bit more about how we’ve 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’s 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. We now have 82 people and get closer to our 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 our workforce totals 100+ employees and counting. That same year we launch 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, Our major focus is travel technology consulting. It seems that we’ve been a travel tech company from the start. But the strategic decision happened in 2017 as we 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 us in proximity to our East Coast clients. 

2021, well… many things!

Opening an R&D office in Tbilisi, Georgia. We see an 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 our first acquisition experience — a small step for the IT industry, one giant leap for AltexSoft — as we learn to accommodate new engineering talent with their own portfolio of partnerships. 

Hiring remotely in Armenia & Azerbaijan. Now we’re well over 250 people and start hiring people remotely in previously untapped but promising locations, expanding our multi-cultural team. The COVID pandemic helped us 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 our lives. With about 200 people working from Kharkiv, one of the cities most heavily hit by Russia’s brutal war, we 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 is evacuated to safe locations. All in all, the company managed to move 1,500 people from the war zone and continue operations. 

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

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

We don’t have infographics this time, but we do have a video for you summing things up. 

How we celebrated, not only spending money but raising it 

No fancy infographics for you, no rock stars at the party for us. Let’s call it a draw. 

Instead of getting together at some resort and throwing a party, we 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 us as we gathered across multiple locations around the world to greet each other and auction several cool lots. 

Most of the lots came from our 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 we fiercely bid on. Additionally, we auctioned two works by famous Ukrainian artist Gamlet Zinkivskyi. Great investments for the future!

Thank you!

One of the values that we all share is gratitude. Being grateful and capable of expressing appreciation to each other is so foundational for AltexSoft that we’ve built an internal gamification platform around that sentiment. 

We’re grateful to our clients and partners for having faith in us and supporting our people. 

We’re grateful to everyone supporting Ukraine.

Eventually, we’re grateful to each other. 

Happy anniversary, AltexSoft!