Funding activity in Kazakhstan this month was driven by investments in fintech startup ProsperPay and healthtech company Hero’s Journey. With Kazakh startups expanding into international markets and earning top ratings for their algorithms, the startup ecosystem has witnessed dynamic growth in September.
Find out more about these and other startup updates in the digest by QazMonitor below.
Kazakh startup ProsperPay attracts $250,000 in investments
ProsperPay, a technological service that provides payroll advances, has successfully completed an investment round valuing the company at $3,000,000.
Kazakh angel investors Murat Abdrakhmanov and Askar Dostiyarov contributed $150,000 and $100,000 respectively to support the service's development.
Earlier this year, ProsperPay presented its project to investors at the Central Eurasian Venture Forum in Almaty.
Innovative Fitness Studios raise $900,000 in investments
Kazakh startup Hero's Journey, focusing on gamifying and automating fitness, has completed the first part of an investment round totaling $1.2 million, securing $900,000 from local and international players to open new studios across Kazakhstan.
The lead investor in the round is the international venture fund Big Sky Capital, with co-investment from the Kazakh investment holding EA Group Holding.
Kazakh startup CodiPlay enters the Uzbek market
In September, students from five Tashkent schools began learning programming using CodiPlay - a gamified system for teaching programming to children. These educational institutions are among the top ten schools in Uzbekistan.
Additionally, students from 20 schools in Azerbaijan became CodiPlay users this month. By May 2024, the startup aims to connect with 2,000 educational institutions across Central Asia and the MENA countries.
The fourth batch of the Astana Hub joint program with Google for Startups began in Astana
Opening Day for the top 15 startups selected through the Silkway Accelerator took place in Astana. Representatives of Google for Startups, trackers, and investors attended the event.
The fourth batch received 197 applications from eight countries, including Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Central Asian countries. After four selection stages, 15 most promising startups were chosen to participate in the Silkway Accelerator: ARLAN BIOTECH, Care Pay LLC, Cleek.kz, Dalatech Systems, Gram, Growave, Metacog Metrics, Metaland Metaverse, Mystory, OILA, Aqyl Battle, Python RPA, Tastamat, 24SaaS-Service Cloud Service Provider, and ZebraEye.
Over the course of three previous Silkway Accelerator batches, 37 startups managed to successfully enter international markets, and the combined valuation of these companies amounts to $400 million. Additionally, they raised $7.5 million in funding during the program.
Kazakh AI-powered algorithm receives top rating from the International Standards Institute
Verigram, a leading provider of AI-based technologies, has received the highest NIST rank in the 1:N Identification category for its algorithm. The program can instantly find face matches in databases with millions of records.
The NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test is the most authoritative recognition algorithm benchmark. To assess the algorithm’s quality, a series of tests measuring accuracy are conducted. In particular, Verigram's solution was tested on a database of 12 million faces.