V-Art, a Ukrainian digital art startup, has raised funds through a pre-seed round

The investors are the American economist Adrian Slivotsky and the Ukrainian venture fund SID Venture Partners.

Digitalization has recently reached the art market. The COVID-19 crisis is only accelerated the transition to a virtual lifestyle. V-Art is a digital art platform to exhibit, sell and collect digital art, launched in 2020. According to representatives of the startup, the team is committed to bridging the gap between the worlds of physical and digital art.

"We came up an initial idea of the platform with transparent and legal infrastructure in December 2019. With this idea, we inspired contemporary Ukrainian artist Roman Minin, who became co-founder and ambassador of V-Art. But the „aha“ moment actually happened a bit later, when we were already conducting a research and communicated a lot with artists, other professionals & collectors. That was exactly when we realized that our idea is needed and can become a business of our lives, so we turned it into a first business plan and applied to the incubator already with an initial team." - V-Art

The V-Art team combines an in-depth knowledge of the art market with expertise in intellectual property law, finance and tech. Hence, the skills required to operate within the Art&Tech sphere broadly and digital art specifically are multi-faceted.

Art is an experience as much as it is a product. It is not meant for traditional e-commerce on Amazon or eBay look-alikes.

Olga Simson, CSO & Co-Founder of V-Art

This virtual residency reached more than 2.2 million people and received over 350 applications from 51 countries. Today, anyone can visit the show through the firm’s website or app, read more about the diverse artworks that populate the spaceship walls, and chat with other visitors in real-time.

Digital is all about breaking arbitrary boundaries

Roman Minin, artist and co-founder of V-Art

SID Venture Partners noted that the fund saw in V-Art a team that possesses a unique mixture of technical expertise, knowledge of the art market, and in anticipation of everything, they are persistently developing their idea for a long time. In the case of the V-Art team, it was these factors that led to the final decision of the GP.

Earlier, the startup received a grant of $ 25,000 from the Ukrainian Startup Fund. In addition, V-Art won first place at the Creative Business Investor Pitch and took part in the Web Summit on the Beta programme.