The largest tech park in Central Asia, Astana Hub, has concluded its 2021 results.

Today, Astana Hub includes 600 companies, 252 of which registered this year. All of them receive a number of benefits. In particular, thanks to tax incentives, hub participants saved more than 9 billion 747 million tenge in 2021, which is 5 billion tenge more than in 2020. In addition, 45 new foreign participants joined the international tech park this year, relocating or expanding their business in Kazakhstan and becoming part of the preferential tax regime. A total of 65 foreign companies are registered in the tech park. Among them are IT companies from Singapore, China, South Korea, Japan, the UAE, Turkey, Germany, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, and other countries of the near and far abroad. In 2021, Astana Hub participants attracted more than 37 billion tenge from domestic and foreign investors, and the total amount of IT exports by the end of the year will exceed $100 million.

“Astana Hub is a complete ecosystem with a wide range of growth opportunities. We have programs for freelancers, students, beginner tech entrepreneurs, startups with ready-made products, and even for large established companies. All of them are available absolutely free as part of state support measures for anyone who wants to develop tech entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan. Next year, we are preparing a whole range of new useful programs for startups and promise to surprise even more,” notes Magzhan Madiev, General Director of the tech park.

2021 was marked by a number of new programs aimed at the development of tech projects. One of them is Techpreneurs – an acceleration program of continuous support for startups at all stages of development. In the new format of the accelerator, each participant independently forms a program plan and chooses the services they need: tracking, group workshops, and individual consultations. 378 startups went through the acceleration program in 2021, of which 236 signed new agreements and 54 moved to a new stage of development.

Another anchor project was the Seed Money program. Astana Hub launched funding for domestic and foreign companies creating competitive IT products for the first time, with a total amount of 300 million tenge. As a result of the competitive selection, 35 finalists will receive funding of up to $47 thousand for the development and scaling of their projects.

94 Kazakh IT companies and tech startups went through the Scalerator acceleration program for the first time to increase the export of IT services and tech products. As part of the program, participants signed contracts and agreements worth $840 thousand and attracted investments of more than $300 thousand. The program helped to get a few steps closer to the goal set by the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev – to reach $500 million in IT services exports by 2025. Another task set by the Head of State – to train at least 100,000 qualified IT specialists – has found its successful implementation within the Tech Orda program. The tech park launched it to make high-quality digital education as accessible as possible for Kazakhstani citizens. 100 Kazakhstani citizens aged 18 to 35 have already received vouchers for training in programming schools in Nur-Sultan, Almaty, Shymkent, Karaganda, Semey, and Uralsk, with each voucher worth 600 thousand tenge. Next year, within the framework of the program, another 2,000 people will receive quotas, and by 2025, this number will reach 20,000 people.

55 specialists learned venture investing skills within the VC School. Participants had the opportunity to gain knowledge firsthand from top CIS investors and try their hand at evaluating startups. Existing investors evaluated startups throughout the year as part of such events as Invest Day, Russ-Finn Demo Day, Unicorn Pitches Central Asia, as well as Demo Days within the Scalerator program.

This year, Astana Hub began to develop a network of international agents. Today, 9 top experts and entrepreneurs from Russia, the USA, Japan, the UAE, Turkey, Mexico, Romania, and Indonesia are engaged in searching for investments for startups, organizing pitch sessions before investors and potential clients. The first result of the program is the planned pilot project of the Cerebra company in a clinic in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

In 2021, the tech park significantly expanded the list of free educational programs for Kazakhstani citizens. Beginner startups, students, and anyone interested in the world of IT were able to study on the new Learning Management System platform. The LMS platform is a distance learning system where you can study courses of various directions, complete interactive exercises, take tests, track progress, and even participate in prize draws. Today, such programs are available on the platform as the Beta Career educational marathon, the Startup School course for beginner entrepreneurs, the Freelance School course for freelancers, the No Code development course, and the tech entrepreneurship course for university students. All these courses will also be available next year with additional new modules and speakers.

In the framework of the development of IT communities in the regions, community managers of Astana Hub worked in 15 cities of Kazakhstan. Hackathons were held in the regions, where schoolchildren and students developed technological solutions for various needs of cities and solutions to social problems of their region. Beginner developers proposed their ideas in the “Idea Battle” competition, as a result of which the 3 best projects received certificates for funding their projects in the amount of 200 thousand tenge. Also, for the first time, Astana Hub and the Almaty Akimat implemented a joint Smart City Accelerator Almaty program, where startups solved urban environment problems and adapted digital products to the needs of the megacity. This year, the IT community was presented with a digital version of the tech park, where all major and minor processes are automated: from accepting applications for participation in programs to filling out online reports for tech park residents receiving tax and visa benefits.

A bright result of the year was the corporate accelerator from Plug and Play Kazakhstan, which Astana Hub implements in partnership with TransTeleCom. Thanks to the program, 20 IT startups received a unique opportunity to improve their skills under the mentorship of experts from the largest accelerator in the world from Silicon Valley.