Ex-head of VK, co-founder of KupiKupon to create an IT holding in Uzbekistan

Businessman Boris Dobrodeyev, who headed Mail.ru Group (now VK) from 2016 to 2021, told RBC about plans to create an IT holding in Uzbekistan. Jasur Jumayev, co-founder of the KupiKupon discount service, became his partner in the project. Dobrodeyev became an adviser and received an options package for a holding called Uzum.

The ecosystem already includes the Uzum Market marketplace, the Uzum Nazia installment service, Uzum Bank digital bank and Kapitalbank. The partners intend to launch a food and grocery delivery service soon. To do this, they plan to develop a network of dark stores across the country.

The main legal entity of the holding is registered in the UAE, Djumayev said. He did not disclose the composition of shareholders and the distribution of roles, explaining that this is “related, among other things, to the fundraising stage”. After its completion, most of the shares should be retained by Uzbek entrepreneurs. Uzum is also in talks with “the largest international investment funds from the Middle East” and intends to raise about $300 million by the end of 2023, the entrepreneur said. The partners did not rule out that in the next three years they will conduct an IPO on an international exchange or several exchanges.

To buy out a share of Kapitalbank and launch the Uzum Market, partners raised “several tens of millions of dollars” from Uzbek entrepreneurs who received a share in the capital of Uzum. The holding allocates part of Kapitalbank’s profits to the development of e-commerce. The partners do not disclose the size of their own investments in Uzum. Djumayev said that he invested in the project funds received from the sale of his IT assets in Russia. According to SPARK-Interfax, Dzhumaev was the owner of 50% of the Algorithm company, which Megafon bought at the end of 2022.

Uzum told RBC that part of the VK team and Aliexpress Russia, as well as former employees of Ozon, Yandex, Delivery Club and other Russian IT companies, joined the project. According to Djumayev, more than 5,000 employees, including 500 developers, are working on the development of the ecosystem. About 80% of developers are Uzbeks. The company intends to hire more than 2,000 people by the end of 2023 and open its own developer academy.

In the spring of 2022, Dobrodeyev, in an interview with Forbes, said that he had left the position of CEO of USM Telecom, which he held after leaving VK, and intends to focus on his own projects. The businessman said that he wants to create an investment company and invest in fintech and e-commerce projects based in the CIS countries, primarily in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Dobrodeyev noted that at the first stage he is ready to invest several tens of millions of dollars of his own savings in the company, and in about a year he intends to attract additional investments from international investors, for example, from India or China.