Startups - The Times Of Central Asia

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Assistive Technology

Teen in Kazakhstan Develops AI Sign Language Translator

Fifteen-year-old Sanzhar Yerezhepov is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) translator to make online information more accessible to deaf people in Kazakhstan. Called Tusin (“Understand”), the platform converts speech and text into lifelike sign language videos that reproduce facial expressions as well as hand movements. Yerezhepov attends Daryn, a specialized school for gifted children in Kokshetau, northern Kazakhstan. A boarding school for children with hearing and speech impairments is located nearby. Watching its students communicate in sign language made him wonder how easily they could access information online, giving him the idea for Tusin. Yerezhepov is from Shiyeli, a small village in Kazakhstan’s Burabay district. Neither of his parents works in science or IT. He is now working with the Kazakhstan Society of the Deaf to test an early version of Tusin and says five organizations have expressed willingness to work with him. The project reached the semifinals of an IT competition at Astana Hub, Kazakhstan’s international technology park for startups. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, Yerezhepov explains why translating into sign language is more complicated than adding subtitles. He discusses the medical startup he put on hold and what he hopes to change in Kazakhstan’s education system. TCA: Tusin translates online content into sign language, but many videos already have subtitles. Why are those sometimes not enough for deaf viewers? Yerezhepov: For some deaf people, especially those whose primary language is sign language, understanding written text can be difficult. First, subtitles are not always available in a language they are comfortable with. They are often automatically generated and do not convey information accurately. Second, sign language has its own grammar and structure. So even someone living in Kazakhstan may have difficulty understanding subtitles in Kazakh or Russian. Many deaf people can read subtitles fluently, but others need sign language translation. TCA: Isn’t sign language the same around the world? Yerezhepov: No. Different countries use different sign languages. There is no single universal sign language that everyone on Earth understands. TCA: So which sign language is used in Kazakhstan? Yerezhepov: Kazakhstan, like some other former Soviet countries, uses Russian Sign Language. We do not have a separate Kazakh Sign Language, although some signs have been adapted. TCA: How do you teach artificial intelligence to understand and reproduce signs? Who checks its work? Yerezhepov: We work with representatives of the Akmola branch of the Kazakhstan Society of the Deaf and with sign language interpreters. Together, we examine each sign, check how accurately it is reproduced, and analyze the results. We have already demonstrated our technology to deaf and hard-of-hearing people, and they understand what the platform communicates. TCA: A sign can change meaning depending on the situation. How does Tusin handle that? Yerezhepov: Quite well, although we are still working on it. The same sign can have different meanings depending on the context. That is exactly the problem we are addressing with artificial intelligence, which can take context into account and determine what is being communicated. Our platform...

C5+1

How Kazakhstan Initiated C5+1

When U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to Samarkand in mid-October, he is expected to meet the foreign ministers of all five Central Asian states under a diplomatic format known as C5+1. He will also be accompanied by representatives of more than 100 American companies, underscoring how far the platform has developed since its creation in 2015. C5+1 — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, plus the United States — has become Washington’s principal diplomatic mechanism for engaging Central Asia as a region. It has expanded from meetings of foreign ministers to presidential summits and cooperation on trade, security, connectivity, energy and critical minerals. Less widely known is the role Kazakhstan played in getting it started. S. Frederick Starr, founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and a longtime scholar of the region, has argued for years that the proposal that developed into C5+1 came from Kazakhstan rather than from inside the U.S. government. In a detailed account published on September 24, titled How C5+1 Came to Be, Starr identifies Kairat Umarov, then Kazakhstan’s ambassador in Washington, as the diplomat who set the process in motion. Starr writes that shortly after Umarov arrived in Washington, the two discussed the absence of a mechanism through which the United States could deal with Central Asia collectively rather than through five separate bilateral relationships. In 2013, after consulting Astana, Umarov approached Nisha Biswal with the idea of creating a regular consultative mechanism between Washington and the governments of Central Asia. According to Starr, Biswal supported the proposal and subsequently took it to Secretary of State John Kerry, who approved moving ahead with the concept. Afghanistan was initially considered for inclusion, which would have produced a C6+1 format. It was ultimately left outside the mechanism, resulting in the C5+1 grouping that exists today. In September 2014, three Kazakh and three American authors, including Starr, published Looking Forward: Kazakhstan and the United States. The study was prepared with support that included Kazakhstan’s embassy in Washington and called specifically for establishment of a “Central Asia Six Plus One” mechanism. The report argued that the United States lacked a regular platform for engaging Central Asia on a regional basis and proposed a U.S.-Central Asia/Afghanistan partnership. By then, the concept had moved beyond an informal diplomatic conversation. A jointly produced Kazakh-American policy paper was explicitly calling for Washington to establish essentially the same regional mechanism that emerged the following year. Starr says the proposal subsequently received support from Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Karimov wanted the Central Asian meeting held in Samarkand, an arrangement to which Astana and Washington agreed. The five Central Asian foreign ministers and Kerry met in New York on September 26, 2015. They gathered again in Samarkand on November 1, where Kerry described the meeting as the first time the six countries had met as a group in that format. The resulting joint declaration committed them to regular meetings under the name C5+1. [caption id="attachment_57100" align="alignnone" width="1828"] Source: S....

ICT Week Uzbekistan 2026

What We Found at ICT Week Uzbekistan: Startups, Robots and the Next Wave of Digital Innovation

ICT Week Uzbekistan 2026 filled Tashkent’s Central Asian Expo with everything from biometric payment systems and health-monitoring AI to experimental satellites and drone football. Held from September 22 to 25, the annual technology event brought together more than 300 exhibitors from 51 countries, according to the organizers. Walking through the exhibition, The Times of Central Asia spoke with developers and startup founders from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan about the latest generation of Central Asian tech products, and attempts to bring engineering education beyond the region’s largest cities. [video width="1920" height="1080" mp4="https://timesca.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/document_5309977585415922252.mp4"][/video] Paying with a Palm or a Smile At the BRB Tech stand, the Uzbek fintech company demonstrated products that it has developed for the banking sector, including biometric payment systems that use a customer’s palm or face. The idea is straightforward: instead of taking out a card or phone at a shop or coffee shop, a customer could authorize a payment using biometric data. [caption id="attachment_57065" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] A representative of BRB Tech presents the company's smile payment and palm payment solutions for shops and coffee shops.[/caption] Company representative Muratbek Azamkulov told TCA that Smile Payment was undergoing testing and had achieved 99.9% accuracy. Palm Payment is initially being developed for Uzbekistan's Business Development Bank, but Azamkulov said the company plans to offer the technology to other banks as well. On a nearby stand, IT Park Dushanbe was trying pitch the Tajik capital as an attractive destination for technology companies. Hilola Safarova, head of marketing and public relations at the park, said it now has more than 100 residents and over 50 partners. The park offers technology companies tax benefits and customs preferences, including exemptions for qualifying imported equipment. [caption id="attachment_57064" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Hilola Safarova, Head of Marketing and Public Relations at IT Park Dushanbe, presents the park's services and opportunities for IT companies.[/caption] A Startup Trying to Make Banks Compete for Borrowers One of the smaller Uzbek startups at the exhibition was FINKO, founded by Jaloliddin Ibodov. Its model reverses the usual process of looking for a loan. Instead of approaching banks one by one, an individual or business submits information through FINKO. The application can then be sent to several banks and microfinance organizations, allowing the borrower to compare offers. The cheapest interest rate is not necessarily the only consideration. "One borrower may want a lower monthly payment, while someone else might prefer a longer loan. Another person will look for the cheapest interest rate," Ibodov said, adding that FINKO currently works with five banks and ten microfinance organizations and has around 30,000 registered users. The platform charges users 10,000 Uzbek soums, about $0.80, to submit an application and receives a commission from a partner bank when a loan is issued. For about a year, the founders financed development themselves. Ibodov said the startup has begun approaching venture capital firms as revenue starts to appear. From Robotics Clubs to Satellites A large part of the exhibition was aimed at a younger generation of engineers. Diyorbek Kodiraliyev of the...

Artificial intelligence

Kyrgyzstan’s NineNineSix Takes On Global AI Voice Market

In February, Kani TTS 2, a text-to-speech (TTS) model developed by Kyrgyzstani startup NineNineSix, ranked among Hugging Face’s top three trending TTS models, according to Kyrgyzstan’s High Technology Park. Hugging Face is sometimes described as the “GitHub for AI.” At $5 per million characters, NineNineSix’s listed price is lower than several paid TTS offerings from ElevenLabs and OpenAI, while Google’s range includes both cheaper and more expensive models. The company illustrates how rapid advances in AI are creating opportunities for entrepreneurs from Central Asia. NineNineSix, whose name refers to the Kyrgyz Republic’s international calling code, +996, grew out of a problem its founders encountered when using third-party pre-trained models at their previous startup. Using its own data, the team fine-tuned those models but remained dissatisfied with the results. Those models sounded robotic and were too resource-intensive and slow, creating a bottleneck. The team concluded that building its own model was the only way to achieve the quality it needed. [caption id="attachment_54711" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Founders Ulan Abdurazakov, Nursultan Bakashov and Denis Pavlov[/caption] Not the First Try NineNineSix co-founder Nursultan Bakashov tells The Times of Central Asia: “Building our own models felt like the natural next chapter of the story we’d already started writing. In the age of AI, the only real choice is to do AI.” Bakashov founded the company in 2025 with Ulan Abdurazakov and Denis Pavlov. He and Abdurazakov had previously worked together, co-founding Makers Bootcamp with a third partner in 2019 to train people for careers in technology. Three years later, they left Makers Bootcamp to focus on AI. They became active in the Kyrgyz Republic’s AI community, organizing events and training for several years. The community now has more than 1,800 members. Their work there led to The Cramer Project, which they launched with Timur Turatali, formerly of EY and Citibank, and Pavlov, who had moved from Russia to the Kyrgyz Republic. The company developed AkylAI, which it describes as Kyrgyzstan’s first AI-powered smart speaker. The name refers to Akylai, a common female name in Kyrgyz; the element “ai” means “moon” and often appears in Kyrgyz names. In October 2023, AkylAI was named a winner in the Unicorn from KG program, run by the High Technology Park of the Kyrgyz Republic. It also took part in Draper University’s Hero Training incubation program in Silicon Valley. The following year, AkylAI was selected for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s first Star Venture cohort in the Kyrgyz Republic. It was also presented at KIT Forum 2024, Bishkek’s flagship annual technology event. That year, The Cramer Project also tested CorePod, a smart speaker designed to support mental health and sleep. CorePod was intended as a global product, beginning with the United States market. The team says the company became the first Kyrgyzstani startup admitted to the LAUNCH incubator in May 2024. CorePod was later pitched to Jason Calacanis, a Silicon Valley angel investor, and featured on his This Week in Startups podcast. An upgraded version of AkylAI was presented...

GSMA Summit

GSMA M360 Eurasia in Samarkand Highlights Push for Faster Digital Growth

Government officials, telecom executives, investors and startup founders gathered in Samarkand this week for GSMA M360 Eurasia 2026, an event focused on one of the region’s biggest questions: how to turn expanding connectivity into long-term economic growth. Held on May 20-21, the summit brought together policymakers and technology companies to discuss artificial intelligence, 5G deployment, digital public services, investment and startup ecosystems. New data released by the GSMA during the event suggests the mobile industry is becoming an increasingly important economic engine across Eurasia. According to the newly published Mobile Economy Eurasia 2026 report, mobile technologies and services generated $270 billion in economic value across Eurasia in 2025, equivalent to 8.1% of regional GDP. That contribution is projected to reach $300 billion by 2030. Opening the event, John Giusti, Chief Regulatory Officer at the GSMA, said decisions made now on regulation, infrastructure and investment will shape Eurasia’s digital future. “The mobile industry is a powerful driver of growth across Eurasia, contributing around $270 billion to the regional economy today and set to reach $300 billion by 2030,” Giusti said during the keynote session. “Hosting M360 Eurasia in Samarkand is especially fitting. Uzbekistan’s rapid digital progress shows how mobile connectivity can modernize public services, boost productivity and improve lives across the region.” The GSMA report estimates that the mobile ecosystem supported approximately 750,000 jobs across Eurasia in 2025. By 2030, mobile’s economic contribution is expected to grow faster than overall regional GDP growth. Yet expansion remains uneven. Despite wider internet coverage, a significant usage gap persists: nearly 29% of people covered by mobile networks across Eurasia still do not use mobile internet. The report identified affordability, digital literacy and trust as the main barriers. [caption id="attachment_49256" align="aligncenter" width="2560"] Image: ТСА, Sadokat Jalolova[/caption] Uzbekistan’s 5G Push and Why 4G Still Matters One of the summit’s recurring themes was 5G deployment. The GSMA forecasts that by 2030, almost 30% of all mobile connections in Eurasia will use 5G technology. Uzbekistan is expected to exceed that average, with more than 40% of connections projected to run on 5G by the end of the decade. Still, Giusti cautioned against focusing exclusively on next-generation networks. In an interview with The Times of Central Asia, he said maintaining investment in existing technologies remains critical. “I think obviously Uzbekistan is leading in terms of 5G deployment,” Giusti said. “But I think it’s very important that we not lose sight of continued investment in 4G.” “We have a lot of 4G devices out there, and I think LTE is offering a huge amount of opportunity for citizens. So, I think it’s this complementary approach of making sure we invest both in the next generation of technology and continue to facilitate the growth of existing technologies.” His comments reflect a broader debate in emerging digital economies: whether governments and operators should prioritize cutting-edge infrastructure or maximize access through already established networks. For many consumers, especially outside major urban centers, 4G remains the primary gateway to digital services. Digital Services Beyond...

Global Tech Weekend

Global Tech Weekend Brings International Investors and Startups to Uzbekistan

More than 2,500 startup founders, investors, developers, venture capital representatives, and technology experts gathered in Uzbekistan’s capital from May 15-17 for the inaugural Global Tech Weekend × TECH FEST, an event organizers say reflects the region’s growing role in the international innovation economy. Held in partnership with IT Park Uzbekistan, the three-day festival featured more than 40 events and over 120 speakers from Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. Discussions covered artificial intelligence, venture capital, gaming, digital transformation, startup scaling, and cross-border investment. The event marks Global Tech Weekend’s first edition in Uzbekistan. Founded in Los Angeles in 2024, the event debuted in Tbilisi in 2025 before expanding in 2026 to Tashkent, Tbilisi, and Baku as flagship host cities. “You have everything you need to achieve your goals. IT Park and the government provide strong support. I wish every country had this level of support,” said Jaba Kikvidze, co-founder of Global Tech Weekend, during the festival. “My advice to founders in Uzbekistan is to work hard, look beyond the local market, explore new opportunities, and make use of the ecosystem being built around you,” he added. [caption id="attachment_49077" align="aligncenter" width="300"] @IT Park Uzbekistan[/caption] One of the recurring themes of the event was how Central Asian startups can move beyond domestic markets and attract international investment. During a panel titled “Roots: Local Playbooks on Investing and Building within Central Asia,” regional investors discussed how funding strategies and startup expectations are evolving across emerging economies. Representatives from global accelerators and investment networks also highlighted growing international interest in founders from less traditional technology hubs. Speaking to The Times of Central Asia, Farrukh Erkinov, head of the Startup Ecosystem Development Department at IT Park Uzbekistan, said one of the festival’s main objectives was to create direct links between local entrepreneurs and global investors. “One of the most important factors in today’s startup ecosystem is connection to the global community,” Erkinov said. “Through Global Tech Weekend, we aimed to create a direct platform for startups in Uzbekistan to interact with international investors, accelerators, and technology partners.” [caption id="attachment_49078" align="aligncenter" width="300"] @IT Park Uzbekistan[/caption] Artificial intelligence was another major focus of the festival. Speakers including Ethan Pierse, a partner at Borderless Ventures whose work focuses on the AI economy, argued that traditional investment models are becoming less effective as AI reshapes industries and shortens startup development cycles. The event also included startup pitch competitions featuring projects from Uzbekistan and neighboring countries, mentorship sessions with international experts, and esports tournaments centered on PUBG MOBILE and Mobile Legends. Organizers said the festival is intended to connect Central Asia more closely with the Caucasus and other neighboring regions. “We believe we can unite Central Asia and the Caucasus,” Global Tech Weekend co-founder Guri Koiava told The Times of Central Asia. “This means friendship, bridges between countries, joint investments, and new business opportunities. Here I see a strong drive from young people. They believe in what they are building."