Uzbekistan’s First Unicorn, Uzum, Leaps To A $1.5b Valuation

At a clip erstwhile nan world feels progressively divided betwixt East and West, Uzbekistan has emerged arsenic a uncommon mediate ground, arsenic nan Central Asian nation’s homegrown unicorn, Uzum, has raised $65.5 cardinal successful a caller backing information co-led by China’s Tencent and nan New York- and London-based VR Capital, pinch information from U.S.-based FinSight Capital.

The all-equity information brings nan Tashkent-headquartered startup’s post-money valuation to astir $1.5 cardinal — a astir 30% jump from nan $1.16 cardinal valuation it announced erstwhile it first deed unicorn status successful March past year.

Founded successful 2022, Uzum started its travel successful Uzbekistan pinch an e-commerce marketplace called Uzum Market, and soon aft its success, nan startup added fintech pinch a debit paper and later expanded into its definitive nutrient transportation service, Uzum Tezkor.

Uzum presently boasts complete 17 cardinal monthly progressive users — astir half of Uzbekistan’s big population, aliases astir two-thirds of each smartphone users successful nan state — and 16,000 merchants. In nan first half of 2025 alone, nan startup recorded $250 cardinal successful gross merchandise worth (GMV), up astir 1.5 times year-over-year.

Its integer banking arm, Uzum Bank, launched a co-branded Visa debit paper pinch pre-approved in installments limits successful August past year. That merchandise has already issued 2 cardinal cards and is connected way to surpass 5 cardinal by year-end. Meanwhile, Uzum’s unsecured lending business deed $200 cardinal successful financed measurement successful Q1, increasing 3.4 times from nan aforesaid play past year. The startup besides posted $150 cardinal successful nett income successful 2024 — a 50% year-over-year jump.

With a portfolio spanning e-commerce, fintech, and integer banking, really has a startup conscionable complete 3 years aged managed to standard this quickly — and tie nan attraction of world investors for illustration Tencent?

Uzum laminitis and CEO Djasur Djumaev attributes nan occurrence to a operation of heavy section knowledge and disciplined execution. He believes that knowing nan country’s culture, user behavior, and business situation — and pairing that pinch nan method and operational expertise that world companies person developed — has been captious to building a business that tin standard quickly and sustainably.

The startup built its integer and beingness infrastructure from scratch to footwear disconnected its business successful Uzbekistan. This includes mounting a logistics capacity that has grown to than 112,000 quadrate meters, pinch a retention capacity of 1.1 cardinal quadrate feet, allowing it to process much than 200,000 orders per day.

The startup has besides group up much than 1,500 pickup points crossed 450 cities, towns, settlements, and villages successful nan state to alteration next-day deliveries. These pickup points besides let nan issuance and distribution of Uzum Bank cards.

“Betting connected section expertise and infrastructure successful frontier markets gives you an advantage to past execute and standard your business very fast,” Djumaev told TechCrunch successful an exclusive interview.

Uzum’s pickup pointImage Credits:Uzum

Initially, Uzum operated connected a fulfilled-by-operator exemplary to alteration e-commerce deliveries. It has since expanded to see fulfillment-by-seller and delivery-by-seller options, pinch a extremity of routing 20–30% of deliveries done these caller models. These caller transportation models will besides thief Uzum grow its stock-keeping units, which are presently complete 1.5 cardinal disposable for its next-day transportation service, up from complete 600,000 SKUs astatine nan clip of its past backing announcement successful March 2024.

When asked what brought Tencent onto its cap-table this time, Uzum’s main strategy and business improvement officer, Nikolay Seleznev, told TechCrunch nan startup’s beardown maturation metrics convinced nan Chinese investor to travel connected committee aft respective quarters of ongoing discussions.

Uzum plans to turn its fintech business by introducing a deposit merchandise successful September and a semipermanent (more than 12 months successful maturity) in installments installation for its B2C customers. The startup besides plans to grow its merchant guidelines and thief its existing and caller merchants pinch its QR codification costs processing system, grow its Visa debit paper program, and build caller products to support mini and mean enterprises successful nan country.

Similarly, nan startup plans to present caller products adding value-added services to its e-commerce business, including those helping to make advertisement revenues. It is besides moving toward scaling its financial infrastructure further pinch AI progressively embedded crossed in installments scoring, fraud protection, and personalized personification experiences.

Furthermore, Uzum plans to unfastened up its e-commerce marketplace for world merchants, opening pinch those successful China and Turkey successful September.

“We are expecting 10 to 15% of cross-border activity coming from these countries,” Seleznev said.

The startup has complete 12,000 group successful its workforce, including blue-collar workers astatine its pickup points, arsenic good arsenic tech, engineering, and merchandise teams crossed each its business verticals.

Similar to different businesses of its sort, which are profitable and person aggregate avenues to make continuous income complete time, Uzum has plans to go nationalist successful nan mean term. But earlier that, it intends to raise a Series B information of $250–$300 cardinal successful nan first half of 2026.

That said, nan startup has truthful acold raised $137 cardinal successful equity, including nan latest round.