Kyrgyz Startup Designs ‘Growave’, an E-Commerce Tool to Retain Customers on Shopify

Eldar Galiev is the CEO and Co-Founder of Growave, a Kyrgyz startup that helps companies retain customers on the retail platform Shopify.  “There were times in my life when I seriously thought about moving abroad. The deciding factor [in staying] was the realisation that many people close to me live in the Kyrgyz Republic. That is something to be cherished. That is why I stayed here”, explained Galiev in 2020. Success after several failures Galiev started his career early. During his sophomore year, he started working for the software company Skalfa. Like many talented founders, he left university during his senior year to focus on building his own products. Growave was not the first company Galiev started. “My first serious project, Hire-Experts, came after three years of working at a product company. At that point, I decided to start my own business and found a startup. The first two attempts failed. The third one, Hire-Experts, turned out to be more or less successful — it later became a company that develops software solutions for online communities,” Galiev said in 2021. This experience helped Galiev when he decided to build Growave in 2014. Growave is a family startup; Galiev created the company with his wife, Munara, and brother Ermek. Their skillsets complement each other, with Galiev overtaking business development, Munara handling HR and finance, and Ermek leading on the tech side.  Galiev and his co-founders saw an opportunity when they couldn’t find products focusing on relationships between brands and their customers. Galiev understood that the local markets were too small and went straight to building a global product from scratch. The team did not have experience of being sellers themselves, so the first iterations of the product did not perform very well.  Soon, they came up with a free plan for customers, which helped them gain their first 500 clients. And with feedback collected from them, they managed to build something that customers actually needed. Now, Growave is a marketing platform for e-commerce, helping companies to retain their customers with an all-in-one solution including loyalty, referrals, wishlists, reviews, and Instagram UGC. Galiev believes that it is not only advertising that is important, but also building long-term relationships with customers. This, in turn, prompts customers to stay loyal to certain Shopify sellers. [caption id="attachment_38510" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Image: Growave[/caption] 'Bootstrapping' ninjas Unlike many global startups, Growave has not raised any external funding from VCs to date, making the company an amazing example of bootstrapping -- growing a business without external funding. In 2017, three years after its launch, Growave became profitable. Before that, Growave had gone through a turbulent time when the co-founders had to invest their income from other projects.  This great example of bootstrapping now has 60+ employees. Still, Galiev is talking to VCs to get their feedback about the startup and to pitch Growave as a solution for their portfolio companies. Now Growave can boast a customer base of over 15,000 companies from more than 150 countries. Over half of...