The history of BotsCrew began in 2016, when three young programmers - Nazar Gembara, Oleg Pylypchak and Maksym Gladysh - decided to take part in a hackathon. Today it is a successful and progressive company, recognized by such major market players as Samsung, Virgin Holidays, Mars, Novartis, Merck and many others. The guys were inspired to create their company by their personal success at hackathons, one of which was decisive: when they won first place in several nominations with their chatbot at a hackathon in Spain and received an order to develop a chatbot from one of the sponsors. Returning to Lviv, in a few weeks the future co-founders of BotsCrew developed a chatbot, which became the first chatbot on Facebook Messenger in the travel industry. Then the guys realized that they liked it and that there was great potential in this direction, and already having a cool project and a strong team in their portfolio, they did not hesitate to create their own company - BotsCrew.

The first decision was to go to Bali to focus on work. There, the guys actively worked on attracting new clients, developing a company development strategy, and at the same time remotely assembled a team in Lviv. Progressive ideas, intensive work, and the charm of the island of Bali could not fail to lead BotsCrew to success. Having assembled a team, the guys returned to Lviv, opened an office, and began to actively develop the company. Today, the company, which started with three people, has grown to almost 40, where everyone is an integral part of the team and a true professional in their field.

Since then, BotsCrew has been developing rapidly and demonstrating remarkable success. In 2018, the company won the title of the best chatbot development company based on customer feedback among more than 200 companies according to Clutch, and also created a new product - a platform that helps businesses create chatbots on their own. In 2019, the founders decided to gain additional experience and joined the Startup Wise Guys Accelerator program in Estonia. There, they learned to scale their business together with 10 startups from around the world. As a result of this program, BotsCrew came up with the idea for a new product – Curify.us, which was launched at the height of the coronavirus.

Curify.us is a platform that helps volunteers find clinical trials of new drugs and treatments. Through a simple chatbot interface, a person in need can find exactly what they need. The product launch took place at a very difficult time, because due to the pandemic, almost all clinical trials were paused due to the danger of coronavirus. However, BotsCrew managed to attract Stanford University to the project, which they helped with several studies, including the development of coronavirus drugs, as well as the first pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutes that continued to work during the pandemic, became clients of this project. The importance of the product is due to the lack of awareness among the population about clinical trials and alternative experimental treatments. BotsCrew co-founder Nazar Gembara notes that the problem is on both sides: people whose lives could be saved by alternative treatments are unaware of this possibility, and 8 out of 10 clinical trials are hampered by a lack of volunteers. As a result, life-saving drugs and treatments are delayed in development for years.

During the pandemic, BotsCrew, together with the Lviv IT Cluster, developed a chatbot called “Temperature,” which helps monitor the health of residents of Lviv and the region. The chatbot is based on Facebook and offers users to answer questions about their well-being every day. This allows you to track the dynamics of changes in the well-being of users, which can become an additional source of information about the epidemiological situation.

BotsCrew plans to expand its activities in the pharmaceutical and medical sectors, as it is convinced that work in this area brings social benefits, which is extremely inspiring and motivating for the founders. Despite the fact that the last major product was released in the midst of the coronavirus, the company managed to get through the crisis almost painlessly: the team remained in full force, it was possible to avoid salary cuts, and new clients replaced those the company lost. The main factors for successful work in crisis conditions, the co-founders highlight the coordinated and high-quality work of the team, rapid adaptation to new conditions, and the establishment of remote work with employees and clients.

Co-owner of the company Nazar Gembara notes that remote work has not worsened the quality of task performance, but even improved it. The most difficult thing for the team was the lack of live communication, but BotsCrew solved this problem with the help of virtual coffee breaks: the program randomly selects two employees who have to meet online for half an hour and talk about anything. This helped not only to cope with the lack of communication, but also to improve friendly relations between team members. Due to the quarantine crisis, the team has become even more united and friendly.

It has now been decided that until the end of the year the team will work from remotely with the ability to visit the office at will. However, employees really appreciate working in the office and are waiting for the situation to stabilize in order to work together again. BotsCrew pays attention to the development of each employee and has many traditions and features that motivate the team. One of these is workation - a combination of work and travel. In early 2019, half of the team went to Thailand for two months, where they worked in a coworking space, explored the area, relaxed on the beach and spent time together. The company is looking forward to organizing similar trips again.

We can't help but be proud of Ukrainian companies like BotsCrew, because they are progressive, keep up with the future and inspire. We wish BotsCrew only development and prosperity.