Maksym Stepanenko

Founder and Managing Partner, INNOVA Consulting Group

INNOVA Consulting Group brings together companies that support businesses: legal services, audit and accounting, marketing, international tax and business registration. RegService is part of the group.

Entrepreneur, business consultant and strategist with hands-on practice in corporate and commercial law. Since 2012 Maksym Stepanenko has helped thousands of small and medium-sized businesses grow, protect themselves and expand in more than 50 countries. In recent years he has been bringing artificial intelligence into his clients' businesses.

Consultations in English, Ukrainian and Russian. Meetings by appointment only.

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Areas of work

• Business strategy and market entry. Where to register a company, how to structure it and how to enter the market of Ukraine, the EU, the UK, the UAE, the US or Canada.
• Corporate and commercial law. Company formation and corporate changes, contracts, legal compliance, liquidation and insolvency.
• Tax. International tax planning: holding structures, intellectual property and licensing, tax models for e-commerce and digital services.
• Business registration and support. Registration of sole proprietors and companies, changes to the Ukrainian state register, certificates, licences and permits. Within the group this is RegService's work.
• Marketing. Marketing strategy, websites, SEO and lead generation for small and medium-sized businesses.
• AI for business. Bringing AI into sales, marketing, document work and reporting, for clients and for the group's own companies. A person is accountable for every result.

Experience

• INNOVA Consulting Group. Founder and Managing Partner of a group of business-support companies: legal services (legal.ua), audit and accounting (keys.ua), marketing (mmix.ua), international tax (crystal.tax) and business registration (RegService).
• Crystal Tax. Managing Partner. Designs international corporate structures for owners of online, e-commerce and IT businesses, from the choice of jurisdiction and tax model to opening accounts and setting up payments. Practice in the UAE, Cyprus, Estonia, the US (Delaware), the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malta and Georgia.
• Marketing Mix. Founded a marketing agency in Kyiv in 2013 that delivers strategy, websites, SEO and lead generation for small and medium-sized businesses.
• Licensed insolvency practitioner. Licensed by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine in 2013. As a liquidator appointed by the Commercial Court of Kyiv, he took a public joint-stock company through liquidation; in 2017 the court approved the final report and liquidation balance. A 2020 Ministry of Justice inspection found no violations in his practice.
• Canada. Based in Ottawa since 2023, he leads the group through INNOVA CONSULT LTD., a Canadian federal corporation. He works with founders entering the North American market and with Canadian companies building ties with Ukraine.

How Maksym works with clients

He builds a structure around how the business actually operates: where value is created, where the team works and where deals are signed. Such a structure holds up under bank and tax authority checks and is designed to last for years.

Maksym looks at each business separately: its activity, turnover, current structure and goals for the next three to five years. Only after that review does he propose options. When an international structure would be premature, he says so plainly and names the point at which it will be worth revisiting.

He applies artificial intelligence where it gives the business a measurable result: in sales, marketing, document work and reporting.

Education

H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University: Bachelor of Economics and Entrepreneurship (2005) and Master of Economic Theory (2006), both with honours.

Profiles

LinkedIn · YouTube · profile on crystal.tax

Get in touch

RegService works remotely with clients across Ukraine and abroad. Meetings by appointment only. Describe your task in the form below and we will agree on a time to talk.