At a time when the world feels more and more divided between east and west, Uzbekistan appeared as a rare central ground as a home -made unicorn of the Central Asia nation, VineHe collected $ 65.5 million in the recent financing round, led by China Toczyns and VR based in New York and London, with the participation of American Finsight Ventures.
The entire Equity round signifies that the valuation after purchase with Tashkent at start-ups up to around $ 1.5 billion-30% jump from a valuation value $ 1.16 billion, which he announced when he first reached the status of a unicorn in March last 12 months.
Established in 2022, Uzum began a journey in Uzbekistan from the e-commerce market called Uzum Market, and soon after its success, the start-up added fintech with a debit card, and later expanded to the service of express supply of food, Uzum Meskor.
Uzum currently offers over 17 million energetic users per month-half of the adult Uzbekistan population, i.e. about two-thirds of smartphone users in the country-and 16,000 merchants. Only in the first half of 2025, the startup registered $ 250 million in gross (GMV) product value, which is almost 1.5 times a 12 months on 12 months.
In August last 12 months, his digital bank arm, Uzum Bank, launched a visa debit card under a common brand with previously approved credit limits. This product has already issued 2 million cards and is on the right track to exceed 5 million until the end of the 12 months. Meanwhile, the unsecured Uzum loan activity reached $ 200 million in the financed volume in the first quarter, growing 3.4 times from the same period last 12 months. Startup also Published USD 150 million net income in 2024-SKOK by 50% 12 months on 12 months.
With a portfolio covering e-commerce, fintech and digital banking, how did it start to scale just three years-and draw the attention of global investors, resembling Tencent?
The founder and general director of Uzum Djasur Djumaev assigns the success of a combination of deep local knowledge and disciplined execution. He believes that understanding the country’s culture, consumer behavior and the business environment – and the combination of this with technical and operational knowledge, which was developed by global corporations – is crucial for building a company that may scale and balanced quickly.
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The startup has built a digital and physical infrastructure from scratch to start operating in Uzbekistan. This includes determining the logistics capability, which increased to 112,000 square meters, with a capability of 1.1 million square feet, which allows it to process over 200,000 orders per day.
The startup also established over 1,500 pickup points in 450 cities, towns, sediments and villages in the country to allow the delivery of the next day. These pickup points also allow for the issue and distribution of Uzum banking cards.
“Placing local specialist knowledge and infrastructure on the Frontier markets gives an advantage over the performance and scaling of your company very quickly,” said Djumaev in TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
Initially, Uzum was energetic in the accomplished operator model to enable e-commerce delivery. Since then, it has expanded to the options for implementation and delivery after sales, in order to conduct 20-30% of deliveries using these recent models. These recent delivery models may also help Uzum to expand their units to support inventory, which currently are over 1.5 million available for his delivery services the next day, compared to over 600,000 at the time of the last financing announcement in March 2024.
Asked what Tencent led this time on the table, the primary official of Uzum’s strategy and business development, Nikolay Seleznev, told Techcrunch strong startup growth indicators convinced the Chinese investor to come on board after a few fourth ongoing discussions.
Uzum plans to develop fintech activities, introducing a deposit product in September and long -term (over 12 months of maturity) credit for its B2C clients. Startup also plans to expand its trade base and help its existing and recent buyers in the QR code processing system, expand the Visa debit card program and build recent products to support small and medium -sized enterprises in this country.
Similarly, startup plans to introduce recent products that add values with a value added to their e-commerce activities, including people who help generate promoting revenues. He also works to increase financial infrastructure, and AI is increasingly settled in credit scoring, protection of fraud and personalized user experiences.
In addition, Uzum plans to open the electronic trade market for international merchants, starting with those in China and Turkey in September.
“We expect between 10 and 15% of cross -border activity from these countries,” said Seleznev.
The startup has over 12,000 people in their working strength, including blue colleagues at pickup points, in addition to technology, engineering and products in all business industries.
As with other corporations that are profitable and have many possibilities to generate continuous income over time, Uzum is planned to be made public in the medium period. But earlier it goals to collect a round of series B in the amount of USD 250-300 in the first half of 2026.
Having said, so far the startup collected $ 137 million, including the last round.