Oivan’s Year 2021

2021 was our first full year as Oivan and my first as the group CEO, and what a year it was. I want to give warm thanks to all Oivanites for their amazing work.

Our yet-to-be-audited 2021 revenue exceeded 13 million Euros, and EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Tax) reached over 1 million Euros. Compared to 2020, our revenue grew over 50%, and EBIT almost 90%. We also exceeded the internal financial targets we set for 2021.

Most importantly, our team performed exceptionally well in providing digital transformation and cybersecurity services for our clients despite the often-challenging world conditions.

The EJAR rental agreement service we built for the Ministry of Municipal, Rural Affairs and Housing in Saudi Arabia processed 1.9 million rental agreements. The Sakani service for finding and purchasing government subsidized real estate helped hundreds of thousands of Saudi citizens find new homes.

Alongside our excellent progress in the Middle East, we have also made fantastic progress in Thailand, where we work with a mobile operator, bank, and an energy company. In Finland, we have continued our work with innovative clients, such as Nordic Real Estate Partners.

Through Challenging Times

While we thrived as a company, Covid-19 negatively affected many Oivan team members and their families. Some team members lacked non-digital social contacts for prolonged periods due to regional lockdowns, and some Oivanites got stuck in the wrong countries when border regulations changed overnight. I am incredibly grateful for the dedication and grit Oivan team members displayed through these challenging times.

2022 started in a positive mood until the devastating breakout of war in Ukraine. For Oivanites directly affected, we offer unlimited paid leave to focus on what matters. Many of us have also contributed to humanitarian aid efforts.

I had the privilege to speak about our work around Bitcoin at the BlockchainUA conference in Kyiv last November. I also got the chance to explore the city with my Ukrainian colleague Dmitry and Finnish colleague Kasper.

Seeing the beautiful city turned into a war zone seems unreal and depressing. I hope peace returns to Ukraine and all the world’s war zones as swiftly as possible.

The Way Forward

Despite , Oivan has a clear plan for 2022.

We keep investing in growing our presence in Saudi Arabia, where our digital transformation work is helping millions of citizens with their lives, especially in the field of housing. We are hiring an increasing number of Saudi nationals to the Oivan team. Several of our international team members are in various stages of relocation or relocation planning to the KSA to further strengthen our presence in the region

Recent world events have made cybersecurity threats top priority for decision-makers worldwide. Cybersecure digital transformation is the foundation of our work at Oivan. This year, we are taking further steps by embedding cybersecurity champions throughout Oivan’s organization and offering our clientele a more comprehensive range of cybersecurity-related services.

Another highlight is our platinum partnership with Nextcloud, the leading secure open-source messaging & file-sharing solution hailing from Germany. Privacy-minded organizations and individuals worldwide use Nextcloud instead of commercial closed-source solutions such as WhatsApp and Dropbox.

Oivan’s expert team can customize and operate Nextcloud-based services for organizations of any size. Our current Nextcloud references include a ministry and a mobile operator in the Middle East and several public sector organizations in Finland.

A new addition to our cybersecurity-related services is our growing cloud security team. Our cloud security experts can help organizations move their on-premise systems to the cloud in a cybersecurity-optimized fashion and operate existing cloud services meeting even the most stringent nation-state-level security requirements.

Our growing design team ensures that our digital service development work embodies the highest human-centric design standards. Our team can help at all stages of the digital transformation process, from brand and service design to pixel-perfect UI designs. Furthermore, we are in the process of refreshing our own brand look & feel, and you can see the results throughout Q2.

Most Oivan team members are talented software engineers who use modern best practices to create future-ready solutions for our clients. Whether it is a government e-service with 200+ integrations or an MVP for a startup, our engineers find the most efficient way to make things happen. One of the strong initiatives at our company is Grow with Oivan, which gives our team members access to learning resources and programs.

Bringing Cultures Together

Our Enhanced Distributed Teams (EDT) model allows us to provide our clients with a combination of white-glove onsite service and a highly scalable distributed talent pool. For example, our key client National Housing Company in Saudi Arabia has over 20 Oivanites working onsite in Riyadh, while almost 80 Oivanites work from our international offices.

With offices in five countries, and over 20 nationalities represented, our multicultural team benefits from a plurality of perspectives.

EDT allows Oivan to bring the best talent worldwide to create optimized production teams for our clients. Whether it is providing homes for ordinary people, optimizing energy efficiency across a nation, securing remote-working connections for thousands of employees of a major city, easy access for Bitcoin-saving, or ensuring privacy in communications, Oivan aims to be the digital force for good.

Internally, we will focus on making Oivan the most inclusive, multicultural, flexible, and fun workplace for digital transformation experts worldwide. Our People & Operations team excels in supporting our cultural growth and wellbeing despite external challenges stemming from dramatic world events.

Final Thoughts

I am proud of our core values Responsibility, Fellowship, and Reliability. These principles have helped us navigate the ever-changing business environment and will be the foundation of our future growth.

I hope that peace returns to the world’s war zones as soon as possible, and people can get back to building value for each other. Meanwhile, Oivan keeps working on creating and operating world-class digital transformation and cybersecurity services for clients seeking excellence in digital productions.

This year we want to get even better at being the digital force for good in partnership with our clients, and we invite everyone along for the ride.