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Diia.Business
Comprehensive digital entrepreneurship support platform providing online and offline services including business registration, training, consulting, export promotion, and access to financing opportunities.
What are the main aims and objectives?
Diia.Business represents Ukraine's comprehensive entrepreneurship support initiative aiming to build "a nation of entrepreneurs" by removing bureaucratic barriers and making entrepreneurship accessible to all citizens. The program pursues foundational objective of encouraging business starting by making entrepreneurship accessible and removing unnecessary bureaucratic barriers historically inhibiting venture formation, recognizing that complex registration procedures and limited information access constrained private sector participation. The initiative aims to teach entrepreneurship throughout citizens' lifespan, integrating entrepreneurial competencies and knowledge into both initial education and lifelong learning pathways. The program seeks to help establish and scale businesses through comprehensive support addressing knowledge gaps, financing access, market information, and international expansion opportunities. Diia.Business explicitly aims to promote and scale business internationalization, recognizing that export development and international market access represent critical pathways to sustainable business growth and foreign exchange generation for Ukraine. The program emphasizes supporting entrepreneurs during extraordinary circumstances, particularly adapting support delivery during full-scale war beginning February 2022, when entrepreneurs and SMEs faced exceptional challenges including facility destruction, displacement, supply chain disruption, and financing constraints. The initiative targets sustainable economic growth, employment generation, tax revenue expansion through business formalization, and positioning Ukraine as competitive destination for international investment and business development.
How does the program work?
Diia.Business operates through integrated online and offline delivery mechanisms providing comprehensive entrepreneurship support.
Online Portal Component: The Diia.Business portal (diia.business/en) functions as comprehensive digital platform offering: guides for entrepreneurs and exporters, 160+ business ideas, success stories of Ukrainian entrepreneurs, current business news, free online consultations, educational courses and training programs, event calendars and exhibition information, self-assessment tools, export services, marketplace of financial opportunities, business analytics, and partnership search mechanisms. The portal was significantly updated in September 2024 with personal user accounts enabling entrepreneurs to store relevant content on exports, grants, educational programs, and development opportunities. The updated portal creates customized business trajectory recommendations based on business type and development stage, enabling entrepreneurs to quickly locate information relevant to their specific circumstances.
Offline Support Centers: Fifteen Diia.Business centers operate across Ukrainian cities (including Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and others) plus one in Warsaw, Poland. These physical spaces provide: free professional consultations, educational events and workshops, event space rental, product testing and demonstration pop-up locations, and peer entrepreneur networking opportunities.
Integrated Services and Information: The portal provides access to over 450 financial programs and services for businesses, enabling entrepreneurs to explore financing options ranging from loans to grants to investment opportunities. The platform integrates export promotion through participation in national trade exhibitions (65+ national exhibitions at international trade shows by 2024) and facilitates international market entry.
Free Consultations: As of September 2025, Diia.Business had provided over 40,000 free consultations covering 16 different business areas, addressing entrepreneurs' specific challenges and questions.
Training and Education: The initiative offers 100+ training courses covering financial literacy, marketing, e-commerce, export activities, and other entrepreneurship domains. Courses are available through both online and offline delivery.
e-Entrepreneur Service: Launched in June 2024 through the Diia portal, the e-Entrepreneur service provides integrated online business registration and management, allowing entrepreneurs to complete 10 different services through single online application in 15-40 minutes, compared to traditional processes requiring weeks.
Export Support: The platform offers specialized support for export-oriented entrepreneurs, including market analytics, business partner searches, international trade event participation, and export contract facilitation. By 2024, Diia.Business had facilitated UAH 426.5 million (approximately USD 16.3 million) in signed export contracts.
What is the overall cost?
The Ministry of Digital Transformation allocated approximately UAH 1.8 billion (approximately EUR 42 million / USD 46 million) for development and maintenance of the entire Diia platform between 2020-2025, encompassing Diia portal, mobile app, Diia.Business, Diia.Education, and related initiatives.
How was it implemented?
Initiative Launch and Foundational Planning (2020): Diia.Business was initiated in February 2020 by Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation as component of broader digital government transformation strategy. The initiative emerged from recognition that entrepreneurs faced significant bureaucratic barriers, limited access to business information and support, and insufficient mechanisms for market access and financing. Policymakers identified that streamlined information access and integrated support services could substantially enhance entrepreneurship accessibility and success rates.
Organizational Partnership Evolution (May 2021): Initial implementation by the Ministry of Digital Transformation was expanded in May 2021 through joint partnership with the newly established Entrepreneurship and Export Promotion Office (EEPO), a state institution dedicated to promoting and supporting Ukrainian entrepreneurship in both domestic and foreign markets. This institutional partnership represented strategic decision to combine digital government expertise with specialized entrepreneurship development capacity.
Physical Infrastructure Development (2020-2024): Diia.Business support centers were progressively established in major Ukrainian cities. The first centers were opened in primary metropolitan regions, with gradual expansion to secondary cities. By September 2025, 15 support centers operated across 14 Ukrainian cities plus Warsaw, Poland, providing consistent growth in geographic coverage and accessibility for entrepreneurs across the country.
Portal and Digital Platform Development (2020-2024): The Diia.Business online portal was developed and continuously enhanced, initially providing basic entrepreneurship information and gradually expanding to comprehensive resource library including 160+ business ideas, training courses, consultation services, export support, and financial marketplace. The portal served as primary digital service delivery mechanism, accessible 24/7 to entrepreneurs nationwide.
Service Expansion During Wartime (2022-2024): Following Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Diia.Business adapted operations to support entrepreneurs facing extraordinary circumstances. Support services were reorganized to address war-specific challenges including relocation assistance, remote business operation guidance, damage reporting and recovery coordination, and financing access for businesses facing operations disruption. The platform integration with government social support programs enabled rapid assistance delivery.
Portal Redesign and Modernization (September 2024): Diia.Business portal was significantly redesigned with personal user accounts, business trajectory recommendations based on individual circumstances, and enhanced navigation enabling entrepreneurs to locate relevant information efficiently. The updated portal reflected accumulated operational learning and user feedback after four years of operation.
What impact has been measured?
Portal Utilization and Reach: Diia.Business portal has achieved substantial user engagement with 15+ million portal visitors documented, representing approximately 36% of Ukraine's adult population. The platform serves more than 1.5 million regular users accessing entrepreneurship resources, training, and support services.
Business Registration Acceleration: The e-Entrepreneur service and Diia-integrated business registration have dramatically accelerated entrepreneur formation. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, 57,665 new individual entrepreneurs (FOPs) were registered through Diia app or portal, exceeding registrations in comparable periods of 2023 and 2022, demonstrating sustained growth in formalization.
Consultation and Advisory Services: Diia.Business centers have provided over 40,000 free professional consultations to entrepreneurs across 16 business domains as of September 2025, demonstrating substantial advisory service reach and accessibility.
Training and Education Impact: vOver 100 training courses have been launched covering financial literacy, marketing, e-commerce, and export activities. Training programs have engaged thousands of entrepreneurs in structured skill development addressing critical capability gaps.
Export Promotion and International Market Access: Diia.Business has facilitated substantial export contract development. By 2024, signed export contracts valued at UAH 426.5 million (approximately USD 16.3 million) were facilitated through Diia.Business participation in international trade events and export matching services. The platform organized participation in 65+ national exhibitions at international trade shows, creating market access opportunities for Ukrainian exporters.
Grant Distribution: Through Diia.Business center network, UAH 123.4 million (approximately USD 4.7 million) in grants have been issued and attracted for entrepreneurs, directly supporting business capitalization.
Digital Service Impact: Beyond Diia.Business specifically, the broader Diia ecosystem has achieved significant impact. As of 2024-2025, 21.8 million Ukrainians use Diia, with Ukraine ranking 5th globally for digital government services development. TIME magazine included Diia in its list of best inventions of the year.
Business Formation Trend: Ukraine currently has 1.707 million individual entrepreneurs as of January 2025, with Diia-enabled services facilitating rapid registration enabling entrepreneurship participation despite wartime constraints.
What lessons can be learned?
- Digital-First Approach Enables Rapid Scaling and Accessibility: Diia.Business demonstrates that digital-first platform design enables rapid geographic scaling, 24/7 accessibility, and substantially reduced service delivery costs compared to traditional offline-only support infrastructure. Portal reaching 15+ million visitors and supporting 1.5+ million regular users reflects efficiency gains from digital delivery enabling simultaneous access independent of geographic or temporal constraints.
- Integrated Online-Offline Support Model Addresses Different Entrepreneur Needs: The combination of digital portal with physical support centers recognizes that entrepreneurs possess heterogeneous support preferences. Some prefer independent digital resource access while others benefit from personal consultations and community engagement. This hybrid model addresses spectrum of entrepreneur preferences without requiring binary choice between options.
- Government-Led Digital Platform Can Address Critical Market Gap: Traditional private sector accelerators concentrate on high-growth-potential startups with scalability prospects appealing to venture investors, leaving modest-growth or lifestyle entrepreneurs underserved. Government-led platform with free consultations, accessible training, and financing marketplace serves broader entrepreneur population otherwise excluded from commercial support services.
- Wartime Adaptation Demonstrates Platform Resilience and Flexibility: Diia.Business successfully adapted operations during extraordinary wartime circumstances, demonstrating platform flexibility to address emergency-specific entrepreneur needs (relocation assistance, damage reporting, war-disruption financing access) alongside normal entrepreneurship support. This adaptability reflects platform architecture enabling rapid service integration responding to evolving circumstances.
- Limited Data on Venture Sustainability and Long-Term Outcomes: While Diia.Business documentation provides substantial activity metrics (consultations provided, training participants, export contracts facilitated, grants distributed), longitudinal data on venture survival beyond registration, profitability achievement, employment generation per venture, and comparative performance against non-supported ventures remains undocumented in published sources. This evaluation gap prevents rigorous assessment of whether supported ventures achieve sustainable growth or primarily represent registrations by opportunity-seekers requiring ongoing subsidy.
- Consultation and Training Reach May Not Correlate with Business Success: Diia.Business provides 40,000+ free consultations and 100+ training courses, yet research literature suggests that training and consulting alone frequently fail to translate into business formation or growth absent complementary elements (financing, market access, founder capabilities). Without longitudinal tracking of consultation/training participants, actual conversion to business formation or performance improvement remains unclear.
- Financing Access Limitations Within Macroeconomic Constraints: While Diia.Business provides financing marketplace aggregating 450+ financial products and facilitates UAH 123.4 million in grants, Ukrainian SME financing remains constrained by banking sector limitations, currency instability, and limited venture capital availability. These structural constraints may prevent Diia.Business from achieving financing accessibility objectives despite platform comprehensiveness.
- Offline Center Geographic Concentration Creates Rural-Urban Disparities: While Diia.Business operates 15 centers across 14 Ukrainian cities plus Warsaw, geographic concentration in major metropolitan regions likely creates accessibility disparities favoring urban entrepreneurs. Rural entrepreneurs face transportation barriers to access physical consultation and networking services despite digital portal availability.
