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28 I Cover story bne February 2019
Kazpost and Bank CenterCredit among its partenering businesses. SENIM also offers a business-to-business service for its partners allowing them to pay their suppliers at zero transaction costs via the same app – their suppliers, in turn, can pay other suppliers, who have joined
crowdfunding and investment platform. The goal is to allow small but successful ventures within the company's network to showcase their business histories to investors in order to secure funding on the crowdfunding platforms. As opposed to most crowdfunding platforms, where
Holding, the parent company of Astana Hub, suggested that Kazakhstan has the potential to build its IT sector around the agricultural sector and its derivative products.
The Kazakh government has been prioritising the agriculture sector
as part of its efforts to diversify the economy away from over-reliance on hydrocarbon exports. Still a number of risks remain, as restructuring efforts made at the second largest Kazakh lender Tsesnabank demonstrated earlier this year – the bank found itself in need of assistance from the authorities in September as much of its portfolio was comprised of bad loans in the agriculture sector.
The saving grace of the Astana Hub project, so far, appears to be its efforts to allow the IT sector to grow organically by playing the role of a mediator, instead of trying to aimlessly throw money at it in anticipation of expertise and demand emerging out of a vacuum. If the Kazakh authorities manage to avoid such mis- takes, seen in the examples of similar
– albeit rather gargantuan – IT projects such as Russia’s Skolkovo, the hub may yet have a chance to grow. Astana Hub's current mediatorial approach appears to be shooting in the right direction.
“Attempts at launching regional IT hubs are not uncommon and clear successes are rare”
SENIM's network. By building up this network, the startup hopes to expand beyond Kazakhstan by entering Uzbeki- stan next year and eventually entering the Russian market, at least in terms of Russian cities not far over the border.
“Our smart wallet gives [our user] ana- lytics about [their] spending," Yermekov added. "In the future we are planning to incorporate an AI-based tool intended to help [users] save money more effi- ciently.”
"We are planning to sell the analytics based on this big data to merchants within our system," he noted. The company also hopes to incorporate performance data of the businesses within its system into its plans for the
there is no binding agreement involved, SENIM's blockchain-based contracts will function as “proof” of investors' stakes in businesses they decide to back.
Projects like SENIM, Smart Gas and Kompra may sound promising, but the question as to whether Astana can achieve full-blown growth to boast an international IT hub has not yet been answered.
Too ambitious?
Attempts at launching regional IT hubs are not uncommon and clear successes are rare. Building a sprawling IT sector requires finding a niche not yet discov- ered by the other IT hubs of the world. Pavel Koktyshev, deputy chairman of the Zerde National and Communications
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Astana Hub is found in space created for last year's expo in the Kazakh capital.