One Ukrainian CEO on how his business kept running during the Russian invasion

Even before Putin launched his “spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion” in Ukraine on 24 Feb­ru­ary, there was a sense that Ukraine was under threat.

Andrew Pavliv, the founder and CEO of Ukrain­ian soft­ware out­sourc­ing com­pa­ny N‑iX, was aware that the sit­u­a­tion in his home coun­try was bal­anced on a knife edge. State­ments from the US warned of a build up of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary on the Ukrain­ian bor­der and con­cerns about immi­nent war were mount­ing.

“We sus­pect­ed some­thing would hap­pen even before the new year, last Novem­ber in fact,” Pavliv recalls. “We were read­ing intel­li­gence reports that left us think­ing war could hap­pen.”

Despite the signs N‑iX, whose client list includes Lebara, Ovo Ener­gy and Cur­ren­cy­cloud, was look­ing for­ward to anoth­er suc­cess­ful year. The com­pa­ny has around 2,000 staff and rev­enues grew by 56% in 2021 dur­ing the post-Covid eco­nom­ic recov­ery. 

Yet despite that pos­i­tive out­look, Pavliv revis­it­ed the busi­ness’s con­ti­nu­ity plans, which were set up after Rus­sia annexed Crimea in 2014. These pre­dict­ed, from expe­ri­ence, that Rus­sia would start to engage from the east and Crimea. This meant that 200 of N‑iX’s staff, who were based in the cities of Dnipro, Kharkiv, Myko­laiv and Kher­son, were par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble if Rus­sia attacked.

“We rec­om­mend­ed peo­ple leave those areas with their fam­i­lies because we thought that some­thing was about to hap­pen,” he says. “We were also analysing what oth­er com­pa­nies were doing and saw they were issu­ing sim­i­lar warn­ings.” 

On 21 Feb­ru­ary, when Putin announced his recog­ni­tion of sep­a­ratist claims over the inde­pen­dence of Donet­sk and Luhan­sk, war was inevitable. “The only ques­tion was – when,” Pavliv explains.

The state­ments trig­gered an emer­gency call between N‑iX’s man­age­ment in which it was decid­ed the com­pa­ny should issue a “much stronger warn­ing” to staff. The HR depart­ment called every­body per­son­al­ly to ask about their plans to stay safe.

Despite the stern warn­ing, only a few peo­ple heed­ed the advice to relo­cate or took up the company’s offers to help them find alter­na­tive accom­mo­da­tion. “One of the things we now realise is that peo­ple seem to be reluc­tant to take action until some­thing bad actu­al­ly hap­pens,” Pavliv says.

Running a business during war

On the eve of the war, Pavliv and his busi­ness part­ner rumi­nat­ed about the com­pa­ny’s future over beers in his apart­ment. Depend­ing on how things worked out, Pavliv won­dered whether N‑iX would have to be renamed PhoeN-ix and, like that myth­i­cal bird, be reborn.

When the first bombs fell on Ukraine, the full busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan was put into action. The recruit­ment team was tasked with call­ing every­one at the com­pa­ny each day to ensure they were safe and helped those who remained in the east of the coun­try to move. The company’s Lviv head office was kept open 24 hours a day and act­ed as an “inter­nal refugee cen­tre” for employ­ees, pro­vid­ing those that were relo­cat­ing with a place to stay for the night with their fam­i­lies.

As a com­pa­ny with a rel­a­tive­ly young work­force, most­ly aged between 25 and 35 years old, they had pre­pared for up to 500 peo­ple to stay in the Lviv office, tak­ing into account that some peo­ple would also have their fam­i­lies with them. But Pavliv admits he was not pre­pared for the num­ber of pets peo­ple brought with them.

Office pol­i­cy was that ani­mals were not allowed in the work­place but restric­tions have since been lift­ed to allow pets. “It was the first time since Covid that we had such crowd­ed offices,” Pavliv says.

Beyond the safe­ty of his staff, Pavliv’s next major con­cern was the busi­ness. A mes­sage was sent to clients on Thurs­day 24 Feb­ru­ary. “We let them know that war had start­ed, that there could be an inter­rup­tion to some of our ser­vices but that we hoped to con­tin­ue to deliv­er,” Pavliv says. “I told man­age­ment at the time that I didn’t believe any of our clients would drop us, as long as we kept pro­vid­ing a ser­vice.”

Most of N‑iX’s clients were sup­port­ive and 80% of them paid their invoic­es in advance to help the busi­ness with cash­flow, while oth­ers asked where they could donate to sup­port the Ukrain­ian cause. By the end of the first week in March, the busi­ness’s out­put had already returned to its usu­al rate. N‑iX signed new clients in Feb­ru­ary and a fur­ther 16 in March – mere weeks after the start of the Russ­ian inva­sion. Pavliv adds: “The word got out that we were con­tin­u­ing to deliv­er, so peo­ple were encour­aged to work with us.”

He says the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing to quick­ly adjust dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic helped in this regard. “We were already almost ful­ly remote, which made things eas­i­er,” Pavliv says. “If Covid hadn’t hap­pened before then we would prob­a­bly have had many more prob­lems to con­tend with.”

Although Lviv man­aged to avoid much of the heavy shelling at the start of the con­flict, it did­n’t avoid attacks com­plete­ly. Sev­er­al explo­sions hit the city in March and in April long-range rock­ets that were tar­get­ing rail­way infra­struc­ture whizzed past Pavliv’s apart­ment block. 

When it became appar­ent that Lviv was not the haven many expect­ed, N‑iX took chairs, cof­fee machines, water and inter­net into the office’s under­ground park­ing lot. When the anti-air­craft sirens sound­ed – which would hap­pen on aver­age every sec­ond day dur­ing the worst peri­ods – peo­ple could con­tin­ue their work while hun­kered down.

“We got used to the sirens and the work­ing sit­u­a­tion quite quick­ly,” Pavliv says. “Over the sum­mer it was the same sit­u­a­tion, and it almost returned to busi­ness as unusu­al. The only dif­fer­ence was that men still weren’t allowed to leave the coun­try.”

After pres­i­dent Zelen­sky declared mar­tial law at the start of the Russ­ian inva­sion, all Ukrain­ian men aged 18 to 60 who were eli­gi­ble for mil­i­tary ser­vice were for­bid­den from leav­ing the coun­try. Pavliv says that around 35 peo­ple from N‑iX have fought on the bat­tle­field. “Unfor­tu­nate­ly we have one per­son, who worked as a qual­i­ty assur­ance lead, who died in Kharkiv,” Pavliv says. “This is sad news. But for­tu­nate­ly, it’s only been one per­son that we’ve lost from the com­pa­ny. He is a hero.”

Business disrupted once more

The sit­u­a­tion changed again in Octo­ber when Rus­sia began tar­get­ing Ukrain­ian infra­struc­ture. Near­ly a third of Ukraine’s pow­er sta­tions were destroyed in drone attacks at the start of the month, forc­ing the gov­ern­ment to issue planned black­outs for the worst-affect­ed regions.

“This inter­rupt­ed busi­ness deliv­ery for some time,” Pavliv says. “Clients were wor­ried about it because inter­na­tion­al news was report­ing that Ukraine had only 40% of its usu­al elec­tric­i­ty capac­i­ty.”

The busi­ness quick­ly adapt­ed to work­ing around the planned black­outs, even rent­ing a new office in Kyiv that had con­nec­tions to three dif­fer­ent pow­er sta­tions to min­imise the chance of dis­rup­tion.

Look­ing back on the past year of tur­bu­lence, Pavliv believes his lead­er­ship style suits unpre­dictable sit­u­a­tions. “You get to the real­i­ty of your busi­ness on a very deep lev­el,” he says. “You need to be able to mobilise every­body in the com­pa­ny quick­ly. Even when Covid start­ed, I con­sid­ered myself a wartime CEO.”

Some adap­ta­tion was nec­es­sary. His focus as CEO switched from day-to-day oper­a­tions to the wider busi­ness strat­e­gy and Pavliv knows he has had to devel­op resilience. “I noticed myself becom­ing more relaxed in oth­er sit­u­a­tions when we weren’t fac­ing a cri­sis,” Pavliv adds. “I feel good deal­ing with chal­lenges that are much big­ger than those just fac­ing the com­pa­ny and where you need to act quick­ly.”

Despite the exter­nal chal­lenges, N‑iX did not stop recruit­ing in Ukraine at any point over the past 12 months and rev­enue has grown by 35%. “We were already a glob­al com­pa­ny but war pushed us to expand into oth­er coun­tries to improve our resilience,” Pavliv says. There are plans to open an office in Colum­bia before the end of the year.

More than $2.5m (£1.6m) has been raised by the com­pa­ny and its staff to help Ukrain­ian char­i­ties and buy vehi­cles and ambu­lances to donate to the front line. “We can help Ukraine even more by con­tin­u­ing to expand,” Pavliv says. “We were found­ed in Ukraine by Ukrain­ian peo­ple. Even though we will soon have the same num­ber of employ­ees out­side the coun­try as in, we will always keep our bul­let­proof resilience.”

Even before Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine on 24 February, there was a sense that Ukraine was under threat.

Andrew Pavliv, the founder and CEO of Ukrainian software outsourcing company N-iX, was aware that the situation in his home country was balanced on a knife edge. Statements from the US warned of a build up of the Russian military on the Ukrainian border and concerns about imminent war were mounting.

“We suspected something would happen even before the new year, last November in fact,” Pavliv recalls. “We were reading intelligence reports that left us thinking war could happen.”