At a time when the world is rapidly divided between East and West, Uzbekistan has emerged as a rare middle ground, as the Homegron Unicorn of the Central Asian nation, UzumChinese Tencent and New York- and London-based VR Capital have collected $ 65.5 million in a new funding round co-eaten by VR Capital, with the US-based Phenocyte Capital participation.
The all-equity round brings the post-money valuation of the tashing-topped startup for about $ 1.5 billion -1.16 billion valuations from a valuation of about 30%, when he first hit Unicorn status in March last year.
Established in 2022, Uzum began his journey with Uzum Market with an e-commerce marketplace in Uzbekistan, and soon after its success, the startup added to the debit card to Fintech and later expanded to his express food delivery service, Uzum Tejcor.
Uzum currently more than 17 million monthly active user-Ujbekistan’s adult population, or all smartphone users in the country, have about two-thirds of the users and 16,000 traders. In the first half of 2025 alone, the startup recorded $ 250 million in the gross merchandise value (GMV), which was about 1.5 times more year-on-year.
Its Digital Banking Arm, Uzum Bank launched a co-branded visa debit card with a pre-informed credit limit in August last year. That product has already issued 2 million cards and is on track for over 5 million by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Uzum’s unsafe borrowed business hit a funding $ 200 million in Q1, growing 3.4 times since the same period last year. Startup too Posted In 2024, net income jumped $ 150 million -50% year-on-year.
With a portfolio spread in e-commerce, fintech and digital banking, how a startup is just more than three years old, it quickly managed to scale it-and attracted the attention of global investors like tenant?
Uzum’s founder and CEO Jiadur Jumvev credited success for a combination of deep local knowledge and disciplined execution. They believe that the couple with the country’s culture, consumer behavior and business environment – and developed by global companies, with the technical and operating expertise developed by global companies – is important for building a business that may be on a quick and continuous scale.
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Startup scratched its digital and physical infrastructure to shut down its business in Uzbekistan. This involves establishing a logistics capacity that exceeds 112,000 square meters with a storage capacity of 1.1 million square feet, allowing it to process more than 200,000 orders per day.
The startup has also set more than 1,500 pickup points in 450 cities, towns, settlements and villages of the country to enable the next day’s delivery. These pickup points also allow the issuance and distribution of Uzum bank cards.
Djumaev told Techcrunch in a special interview, “Betting on local expertise and infrastructure in Frontier Markets then gives you an advantage to perform and scale your business very fast.”
Initially, Uzum operated on a full-by-operator model to enable e-commerce delivery. Since then, with the target of rooting 20–30% delivery through these new models, it has been expanded to include the supply-by-sector and delivery-by-sector options. These will also help the new delivery model Uzum to expand their stock-keeping units, which are currently available more than 1.5 million for the next day’s delivery service from SKU over 600,000 SKUs at the time of its final funding announcement in March 2024.
Asked what Tencent was brought to its cap-table this time, Nikole Selezenave, the main strategy and business development officer of Uzum, said that Techcrunch assured the Chinese investor to come on the board after several quarters of the ongoing discussions.
Uzum has planned to increase its fintech business by launching a long -term (more than 12 months in maturity) for its B2C customers in September and its B2C customers. Startup plans to expand its merchant base and help to help their existing and new traders with their QR code payment processing system, expand their visa debit card programs and to create new products to support small and medium enterprises in the country.
Similarly, the startup plans to introduce new products connecting price-added services in its e-commerce business, including those who help generate advertising revenue. It is working towards furthering its financial infrastructure, in which AI is embedded in rapid credit scoring, fraud conservation and individual user experiences.
Furthermore, Uzum has planned to open its e-commerce marketplace for international traders, starting with those in China and Türkiye in September.
“We are expecting 10 to 15% of the cross-border activity coming from these countries,” Silezenave said.
The startup has more than 12,000 people in its workforce, including tech, engineering and product teams in all its commercial verticals along with blue-collar workers at its pickup points.
Similar to other types of businesses of its type, which are profitable and have several ways to generate continuous income over time, the Uzum plans to be public in the medium period. But before that, it aims to increase a series B round of $ 250- $ 300 million in the first half of 2026.
The startup has so far raised $ 137 million in equity, including the latest round.
