Uzum, a Tashkent, Uzbekistan-based digital services ecosystem company, secured more than $100M in funding through a combination of a Series A funding and debt financing.
The company secured over $50M in equity through a Series A funding round consisting wholly of primary investments. The round was led by FinSight Ventures, joined by Xanara Investment Management, a multifamily office in the UAE, and Uzum’s senior management team. Uzum separately raised an additional $50M+ in debt financing. This financing makes Uzum the first tech company in Uzbekistan to achieve unicorn status with a post-money valuation of over $1 Billion.
The company plans to use the funds to develop the country’s IT and logistics infrastructure, as well as to fund its own BNPL-service.
Led by Founder and CEO Djasur Djumaev, Uzum provides services spanning e-commerce, express delivery, banking and fintech, and business development. More than 10 million people in Uzbekistan, or nearly one-third of the country’s population, use its services every month.
In 2024, the company plans to launch a large logistics complex for e-commerce in the country, which is expected to increase e-commerce turnover on its platform by more than 150% during the year. It also plans to launch a number of ecosystem products for unsecured lending to individuals as well as small and medium-sized enterprises.
Commenting on the news, Djasur Djumaev said: “Digital services in Uzbekistan today are incredibly popular. We see this in the growth rates of the markets that we work in as well as in our own experience. In a little over a year, we have built an ecosystem whose services are used by more than 10 million people in Uzbekistan every month. Last year, we earned nearly $100 million in net profit, and we intend to increase this figure this year, partly by integrating services within the Uzum ecosystem. We also plan to add new business streams and services for business and private users to the ecosystem this year. We see tremendous interest in the Uzbek market and in Uzum’s digital ecosystem as one of its drivers and, of course, this would not have been possible without the extraordinary team of world-class professionals who created the first tech unicorn in the country’s history.”
FinSMEs
26/03/2024