Uzbekistan’s first unicorn, Uzum, leaps to a $1.5B valuation

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% soar from the $1.16 billion valuation it introduced when it first hit unicorn standing in March final yr.

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 specific meals supply service, Uzum Tezkor.

Uzum at the moment boasts over 17 million month-to-month lively customers — almost 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 almost 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 yr. 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 yr. The startup additionally posted $150 million in internet revenue in 2024 — a 50% year-over-year soar.

With a portfolio spanning e-commerce, fintech, and digital banking, how has a startup simply over three years outdated managed to scale this shortly — and draw the eye of world traders like Tencent?

Uzum founder and CEO Djasur Djumaev attributes the success to a mix of deep native information and disciplined execution. He believes that understanding the nation’s tradition, shopper conduct, and enterprise setting — and pairing that with the technical and operational experience that international firms have developed — has been important to constructing a enterprise that may scale shortly and sustainably.

The startup constructed its digital and bodily infrastructure from scratch to kick off its enterprise in Uzbekistan. This contains setting a logistics capability that has grown to than 112,000 sq. meters, with a storage capability of 1.1 million sq. ft, 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 offers you a bonus to then carry out and scale your enterprise very quick,” Djumaev instructed TechCrunch in an unique interview.

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 via these new fashions. These new supply fashions may also assist Uzum broaden its stock-keeping models, that are at the moment 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 improvement officer, Nikolay Seleznev, instructed TechCrunch the startup’s sturdy 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 broaden its service provider base and assist its present and new retailers with its QR code fee processing system, broaden its Visa debit card program, and construct new merchandise to help small and medium enterprises within the nation.

Equally, the startup plans to introduce new merchandise including value-added providers to its e-commerce enterprise, together with these serving to to generate commercial revenues. It’s also working towards scaling its monetary infrastructure additional with AI more and more embedded throughout credit score scoring, fraud safety, and personalised 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 expect 10 to fifteen% of cross-border exercise coming from these international locations,” 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.

Much like different companies of its kind, that are worthwhile and have a number of avenues to generate steady revenue over time, Uzum has plans to develop into public within the medium time period. However earlier than that, it goals to lift a Sequence 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 newest spherical.