At a time when the world is increasingly separated between the East and the West, Uzbekistan has emerged as a rare middle ground, such as the unicorn of the central nation of the nation, OuzoIt has raised $ 65.5 million in a new round of funding co -existed by China’s Tencent and China’s VR Capital and based in New York and London, involving Finsight Ventures based in US.
The round of all shares brings the valuation after Tashkend’s money with Tashkent-headquarteed startup at about $ 1.5 billion-a jump almost 30% of the $ 1.16 billion valuation it announced when it first hit Unicorn Status last March.
Founded in 2022, Uzum launched its trip to Uzbekistan with an e -commerce market called Uzum Market and shortly after its success, the start added Fintech with a debit card and later expanded to Express Delivery Service, Uzum Tezkor.
Uzum currently has over 17 million monthly active users-almost half of Uzbek’s adult population or about two-thirds of all smartphone users in the country-and 16,000 traders. In the first half of 2025, the start recorded $ 250 million in gross commodity value (GMV), up to almost 1.5 times on an annual basis.
Its digital bank arm, Uzum Bank, launched a debit card with pre-empted credits last August. This product has already issued 2 million cards and is on the right track to exceed 5 million by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Uzum lending operation hit $ 200 million in funded volume in the first quarter, increasing 3.4 times from the same period last year. The boot too posted $ 150 million in net income in 2024-a 50% jump on an annual basis.
With a portfolio covering e-commerce, fintech and digital banking, how has a startup of just more than three years old managed to escalate it quickly-and get the attention of world investors such as Tencent?
The founder and chief executive of Uzum Djasur Djumaev attributes success to a combination of deep local knowledge and disciplined execution. He believes that understanding the culture, behavior of consumers and the country’s business environment – and matching it with the technical and operational expertise developed by world companies – is critical to building a business that can escalate quickly and viable.
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The start created its digital and natural infrastructure from the beginning to launch its business in Uzbekistan. This includes the designation of a capacity capacity that has increased to 112,000 square meters, with a storage capacity of 1.1 million square feet, allowing it to process more than 200,000 orders a day.
The start has also created more than 1,500 receipt points in 450 cities, cities, settlements and villages in Chora to allow the next day’s traditions. These pick -up points also allow the issuance and distribution of Uzum bank cards.
“The bet for local know -how and infrastructure on Frontier markets gives you an advantage to execute and scale your business very quickly,” Djumaev told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
Initially, Uzum worked on a model that has been fulfilled to allow e -commerce deliveries. Since then it has been expanded to include fulfillment options per seller and delivery, with the aim of launching 20% to 30% of traditions through these new models. These new delivery models will also help Uzum expand stocks, which are currently over 1.5 million available for the next day’s delivery service, from over 600,000 SKUs at the time of the last funding announcement in March 2024.
When asked what Tencent brought this time to his table, the head strategic and UZUM Business Development Officer Nikolay Seleznev told TechCrunch that strong start -up measurements of the start of the start of the Chinese investor to come after several suburbs of continuing discussions.
Uzum plans to develop Fintech businesses by importing a deposit product in September and a long -term (over 12 months in maturity) credit facility for B2C customers. The start is also planning to expand its commercial base and help existing and new traders with the QR payment processing system, expand the visa debit card program and create new products to support small and medium -sized enterprises in the country.
Similarly, the start plans to introduce new products that add value -added services to the e -commerce business, including those who contribute to advertising revenue. It also works to escalate its economic infrastructure further with AI increasingly integrated throughout the credit rating, protection against scams and personalized user experiences.
In addition, Uzum plans to open the e -commerce market for international traders, starting with those in China and Turkey in September.
“We expect 10 to 15% of the cross -border activity coming from these countries,” Seleznev said.
The start has more than 12,000 people in its workforce, including blue collar workers at their points of receipt, as well as technology, engineering and products groups in all business verticals.
Similar to other businesses of its kind, which are profitable and have multiple paths to generate continuous income over time, Uzum plans to become public in the medium term. But before that, it aims to gather a round of $ 250 – $ 300 million in the first half of 2026.
The launch has so far raised shares of $ 137 million, including the last round.
