The development of the Ukrainian IT industry improved in 2014, due to amongst other reasons the arrival of new market players, but the shortage of specialists in the country amounts to some 100,000 people, Chairman of the supervisory board of the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA), and managing partner at AVentures Andriy Kolodiuk has said.

"There is a problem in the industry: we have a shortage of 100,000 specialists who could work in the industry," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

He said that in 2014, 10 new capital funds arrived in Ukraine and some Ukrainian businessmen reoriented their investment in IT from coal, metal and other similar businesses.

"Now the total number of startups is around 2,000, and the major part of them appeared last year. I link this first of all with two things. The first one is an internal intellectual upswing. The second one is that many people saw opportunities for themselves and that the major part of IT specialists started making projects at a global level," Kolodiuk said.

He added that the quality of Ukrainian projects has improved. He said that Ukraine has around six companies - Paymentwall, Jooble, InVisible CRM, Terrasoft, and Grammarly and Depositphotos, which have capitalization of over $50-100 million and are developing quickly.

"Thanks to events in the country many, first of all the youth, have had their chakras opened. They understood what their responsibility is to themselves, to their country and to their projects. They understood that projects could be created here," he said.

He said that it is possible to train start-point specialists for the industry with the three-six-month courses.

"Half of programmers are self-educated. Are we afraid that officials will go to Maidan if they are dismissed? Go to the courses and receive jobs which allow you earning $1,500-2,000, the doors are open," Kolodiuk said.

He said that many cities in Ukraine have created their own "IT industry eco-system".

"They are Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Chernihiv… The key thing here is the concentration of people. There is a concentration of people in these cities which is an element of this eco-system… Kyiv has become an IT hub which competes with Berlin, as investors and businessmen arrive in those places where hullabaloo is seen," he said.

He said that Ukrainian programmers mainly stay at home as it is more profitable. The UVCA has called on the government to retain attractive conditions for IT specialists, and to not impose extra taxes on them.

Kolodiuk said that the most attractive opportunities for investment in the IT sector are projects linked to healthcare, payments, cloud projects and mobile attachments.

"I believe in the online video market with big data, I believe in Internet for gadgets and that's all, I think," he added.