Dino.kg — a startup that unites manufacturers and sellers on a single platform

Kanybek Beshenbekov, city — Bishkek, co-founder of Dino.kg, IT Product Manager, LinkedIn

How It All Started

I am the co-founder of Dino.kg, a wholesale B2B platform for the textile industry that helps find the right clothing manufacturer for specific requests. Our project’s CEO, Batyr Asanov, has extensive expertise in the sewing industry—over 10 years. He was involved in retail and direct clothing sales. Knowing the industry from the inside, he saw how important it is to properly organize the clothing production process.

I joined the project because I wanted to do something innovative rather than stay in traditional business. I also had the necessary IT expertise. We wanted to create an IT product that could grow into something significant in Central Asia. We noticed a trend: people coming to Kyrgyzstan didn’t know which sewing factory to choose, so we decided to create a marketplace that would simplify this process.

We hired an outsourced development team and prepared a technical specification for them. Understanding that developing the product would be resource-, energy-, and cost-intensive, we started small—creating a minimum viable product and gradually expanding it.

Our first goal was to allow manufacturers to register on the platform and list their products on an online showcase. Initially, this came with many bugs, but we successfully launched the product. We organized a two-day offline presentation for local sellers, gathering over 100 people. After that, we began promoting the platform, collecting user feedback.

Team

Mostly, we hire outsourced staff—designers, SMM specialists—and collaborate with the Alliens studio. Five people work full-time:
— frontend developer
— CEO, responsible for vision and new directions
— me, as product manager, responsible for product development
— customer support specialist
— financial director.

In addition to the IT product, the company has a sewing production facility with over 30 employees. Therefore, we know firsthand the difficulties manufacturers face.

Target Audience

Our target audience consists of clothing manufacturers, sewing workshops, and factories. In the future, we plan to include design studios, fulfillment centers, and offline showrooms, as well as expand to other countries. We provide a platform where manufacturers can register, list, and sell their products. At this stage, we are working on evaluating manufacturer quality so users can choose the best ones.

We have a verification department that checks manufacturers against our criteria. We collect client reviews, inspect the technical aspects of the workshops, and communicate with staff to ensure the quality of manufacturers’ work.

Incubation Programs

We actively participate in various forums, which helps Dino gain popularity in the textile industry. Recently, we were selected for the 1 Batch acceleration program in Kazakhstan by the venture studio RS Bootcamp. We will also participate in the “Startup Nation” program in September 2024.

We don’t miss opportunities and try to apply to various programs. The experience and expertise of the right people are what we need at this moment. Acceleration programs can help us grow.

Challenges

The main challenge is financial resources. Developing and promoting the product requires significant investment. During the launch, we attracted private investments, but they turned out to be insufficient for full-scale development. Currently, we need additional funds for marketing and increasing traffic to the platform to start implementing paid subscriptions.

Another difficulty is that many manufacturers are skeptical about such platforms: people are used to selling offline. They don’t understand that today you need to spend money on online promotion. We conduct extensive research, communicate with them personally, and strive to convey the value of using online tools.

Achievements

We participated in the Sellers Forum in Issyk-Kul, where we appeared as both participants and partners. There, we met with a delegation from Alibaba, including regional managers from Central Asia. During our discussions, we discovered that our business models are similar, although Alibaba operates on a global scale while we are more specialized. This led to the beginning of negotiations on possible cooperation—we are being considered as a potential bridge between Kyrgyzstan and Alibaba.

During our operation, we registered over 400 manufacturers and 200 sellers on the platform, most of whom are sellers on Wildberries and Ozon. We are growing by approximately 30% per month—that’s about 40–50 new users each month.

We achieved these results even without active spending on marketing. We already have successful cases where sellers connect with our suppliers and close deals.

Plans

By the end of the year, we plan to register over 1,000 suppliers on the platform and add new features such as logistics, secure transactions, and warehousing. In the next five years, we aim to expand to other markets, covering CIS countries, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Our goal is to make Dino the largest clothing marketplace in Central Asia with billion-dollar turnover.

I believe this is quite achievable, especially in our field—the textile industry, where significant funds are involved. In Kyrgyzstan, about 70% of all money in the light industry is in the shadow economy. We believe our platform will help bring some of these funds out of the shadows and become a powerful hub in Central Asia.