Women make 45% of SME owners in Kazakhstan
There are more and more women in Kazakh business sector! Many of them are focusing on completely fresh and new ideas and founding their startups. Interesting projects are turning into profitable cases. Rinata Ilyubaeva is a mother of two, but this does not prevent her from being high profile in the business world. She created the country's first platform that allows companies to vet their suppliers.
“We founded a startup in 2018. Up to this point, large companies have checked on their counterparties manually. They had to visit the egov portal and log in via EDS. They also went to the ‘sud.gov.kz’ website. There are more than 20 different sources, and we put them all together in one platform, and in just three minutes we prepare and upload a full-fledged certificate,” said project founder Rinata Ilyubayeva.
Three fellow students Assem, Dana and Mariya founded a social project. They created the Ozim platform to help parents of children with special needs. They conducted research and identified parenting information needs and developed a mobile app.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, many parents have been left without support because many traditional centers have gone offline. And people had to face their problems solely. And so our team and I thought that, well, what we need to do is give these people some kind of unified platform, where they can go and get information not only about disabilities and skills, but also just talk to other parents,” said Assem Tazhiyeva, a project co-founder.
Now, parents don’t have to go to Internet search engines to get the information that they need. Everything is in one place. The girls found specialists and recorded answers to the most topical questions.
“Parents can receive theoretical and practical materials for teaching their children at home, for massage and other necessary assistance. If we are talking about specialists, then it is a place where they can realize themselves and share their competencies. They can post, publish their materials on this platform and engage in dialogue,” said Mariya Ippolitova, a project co-founder.
All of these projects were made possible thanks to Astana Hub as well. The international technopark said that a great number of startups are brought to life by women.
“I see a trend that there are more and more young women in startups. As an example, there are big projects like Taxi 5+, Sulu and so on. The founders of these startups are young women,” said Meruert Tleubergenova, the manager of Business Programs, Astana Hub.
Women’s startups can be very different. While some young women take up projects and run large businesses, others focus on the social sphere and solve the problems of the country’s citizens. According to statistics, in Kazakhstan, 45 percent of SMEs owners are women.
Translation by Assem Zhanmukhanova
Editing by Saule Mukhamejanova
