At a time when the world feels more and more divided between East and West, Uzbekistan has emerged as a uncommon center floor, because the Central Asian nation’s homegrown unicorn, Uzum, has raised $65.5 million in a brand new funding spherical co-led by China’s Tencent and the New York- and London-based VR Capital, with participation from U.S.-based FinSight Capital.
The all-equity spherical brings the Tashkent-headquartered startup’s post-money valuation to roughly $1.5 billion — a virtually 30% bounce from the $1.16 billion valuation it introduced when it first hit unicorn standing in March final 12 months.
Based in 2022, Uzum began its journey in Uzbekistan with an e-commerce market known as Uzum Market, and shortly after its success, the startup added fintech with a debit card and later expanded into its categorical meals supply service, Uzum Tezkor.
Uzum at present boasts over 17 million month-to-month energetic customers — practically half of Uzbekistan’s grownup inhabitants, or about two-thirds of all smartphone customers within the nation — and 16,000 retailers. Within the first half of 2025 alone, the startup recorded $250 million in gross merchandise worth (GMV), up practically 1.5 occasions year-over-year.
Its digital banking arm, Uzum Financial institution, launched a co-branded Visa debit card with pre-approved credit score limits in August final 12 months. That product has already issued 2 million playing cards and is on monitor to surpass 5 million by year-end. In the meantime, Uzum’s unsecured lending enterprise hit $200 million in financed quantity in Q1, rising 3.4 occasions from the identical interval final 12 months. The startup additionally posted $150 million in internet earnings in 2024 — a 50% year-over-year bounce.
With a portfolio spanning e-commerce, fintech, and digital banking, how has a startup simply over three years outdated managed to scale this rapidly — and draw the eye of worldwide buyers like Tencent?
Uzum founder and CEO Djasur Djumaev attributes the success to a mix of deep native data and disciplined execution. He believes that understanding the nation’s tradition, shopper habits, and enterprise surroundings — and pairing that with the technical and operational experience that international firms have developed — has been essential to constructing a enterprise that may scale rapidly and sustainably.
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The startup constructed its digital and bodily infrastructure from scratch to kick off its enterprise in Uzbekistan. This consists of setting a logistics capability that has grown to than 112,000 sq. meters, with a storage capability of 1.1 million sq. toes, permitting it to course of greater than 200,000 orders per day.
The startup has additionally arrange greater than 1,500 pickup factors throughout 450 cities, cities, settlements, and villages within the nation to allow next-day deliveries. These pickup factors additionally permit the issuance and distribution of Uzum Financial institution playing cards.
“Betting on native experience and infrastructure in frontier markets provides you a bonus to then carry out and scale your enterprise very quick,” Djumaev instructed TechCrunch in an unique interview.
Uzum’s pickup pointImage Credit:Uzum
Initially, Uzum operated on a fulfilled-by-operator mannequin to allow e-commerce deliveries. It has since expanded to incorporate fulfillment-by-seller and delivery-by-seller choices, with a objective of routing 20–30% of deliveries by these new fashions. These new supply fashions will even assist Uzum develop its stock-keeping models, that are at present over 1.5 million accessible for its next-day supply service, up from over 600,000 SKUs on the time of its final funding announcement in March 2024.
When requested what introduced Tencent onto its cap-table this time, Uzum’s chief technique and enterprise growth officer, Nikolay Seleznev, instructed TechCrunch the startup’s robust progress metrics satisfied the Chinese language investor to come back on board after a number of quarters of ongoing discussions.
Uzum plans to develop its fintech enterprise by introducing a deposit product in September and a long-term (greater than 12 months in maturity) credit score facility for its B2C prospects. The startup additionally plans to develop its service provider base and assist its current and new retailers with its QR code fee processing system, develop its Visa debit card program, and construct new merchandise to assist small and medium enterprises within the nation.
Equally, the startup plans to introduce new merchandise including value-added companies to its e-commerce enterprise, together with these serving to to generate commercial revenues. It is usually working towards scaling its monetary infrastructure additional with AI more and more embedded throughout credit score scoring, fraud safety, and customized person experiences.
Moreover, Uzum plans to open up its e-commerce market for worldwide retailers, starting with these in China and Turkey in September.
“We predict 10 to fifteen% of cross-border exercise coming from these nations,” Seleznev mentioned.
The startup has over 12,000 individuals in its workforce, together with blue-collar staff at its pickup factors, in addition to tech, engineering, and product groups throughout all its enterprise verticals.
Just like different companies of its kind, that are worthwhile and have a number of avenues to generate steady earnings over time, Uzum has plans to change into public within the medium time period. However earlier than that, it goals to lift a Collection B spherical of $250–$300 million within the first half of 2026.
That mentioned, the startup has to this point raised $137 million in fairness, together with the most recent spherical.
