BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 13. Central Asia is a largely untapped and thus fast-expanding region when it comes to startup development, with 28 percent growth of venture capital raising year-on-year since 2020, a source at MOST Ventures told Trend.
The MOST Ventures representative said that Kazakhstan benefitted immensely from the digitalization of the economy in the past several years.
“Compared to the last year when the volume of non-cash transactions in Kazakhstan was 12.5 trillion Kazakh tenge ($27.85 billion), it increased to 19.1 trillion Kazakh tenge ($42.56 billion) in the first quarter of 2022 only, and the share of non-cash transactions increased from 74.3 percent to 80.9 percent,” the source noted.
MOST Ventures official added that the share of Internet transactions and mobile banking in the overall volume of non-cash transactions amounts to 16.1 trillion Kazakh tenge ($35.87 billion) and the overall trend for the development of online payments is expected to gain momentum.
Overall, the company representative notes that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have the highest potential for innovation ecosystem development, among the Central Asian countries. The two countries represent over 80 percent of the regional ecosystem. MOST Ventures cites a high degree of internet penetration in Kazakhstan (93 percent) and Uzbekistan (86 percent) as the major reason explaining their leadership in the region.
Earlier, MOST Ventures revealed the plans to launch its second venture fund ($30M) which will provide support for global early-stage tech companies with a regional presence in Central Asia.