Anton Marrero
Founder of Softline and Intecracy Group
I had a passion for technology from an early age. A systems engineering graduate, I was teaching Artificial Intelligence at KPI by 1991. But times were hard — I had to leave the department. Only one in ten of my classmates managed to work in their field. To stay in IT, Alisher Ramazanov and I founded Softline in 1995. Yuriy Syvytsky joined a little later.
The first contract was automating an agro-industrial exchange. We literally lived in a back room behind the trading floor. The project was risky — few wanted to take it on. We took the risk — and it worked. Even then, working with Ukrposhta, we understood the key thing: code is not the main thing. Understanding how an organisation works is.
In 2009 the R&D Institute "Ecotech", founded by specialists from the Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics, joined us. The institute had worked exclusively on military projects since the 1990s — these competencies enable us today to fulfil orders in the security and defence sector. Softline's history is part of the history of Ukrainian IT as a whole.