How startup OYGUL is changing the approach to buying flowers in Uzbekistan

Makhmudjon Khodzhiboyev Nuriislamov, city — Tashkent, co-founder OYGUL, Instagram

How It All Began

My co-founders and I met back in our school years. I have been friends with Temur Kasimov since the fifth grade, and in the seventh and eighth grades, when I started getting into programming, I wrote him some HTML code during a computer science class. When he ran it on the computer and saw the message “Temur, learn to program,” he was quite surprised. After that incident, he began studying frontend development at a training center.

I met Asilbek Akbarov in the tenth grade when we both enrolled in the Presidential School in Tashkent and became its first graduating class.

Launching the Startup

After graduating from school, we enrolled in different universities: Asilbek went to the University of Manchester, I attended New Uzbekistan University, and Temur joined Westminster International University. By the end of the first year, Asilbek returned from Manchester, gathered us, and proposed creating a startup, inspired by the story of Central Asia’s first unicorn — Kaspi.kz. His idea was to build an ecosystem, and we began searching for investors. However, no one was willing to invest solely in a concept proposed by 17- to 18-year-old founders. After a year of research, we decided to start simple and independently launch a marketplace for ordering flowers.

Target Audience

We conducted research by visiting more than 60 flower shops in Tashkent, surveying over 200 people, and conducting CustDev interviews. As a result, we identified our key customer as a person aged 18–25, in a long-term relationship, including newlyweds, earning at least 10 million Uzbek som per month.

Incubation Programs

During the development of our platform, we received an offer from Ulugbek Rustamov, CEO of Click, who became interested in our idea. He proposed integrating our project into Click as the first miniApp of an external service. Even during the OYTickets era, he had considered integrating our service into Click for purchasing movie tickets, but that didn’t happen then. However, despite past setbacks, he offered us another chance.

Thanks to our collaboration with Click, we were able to attract a large number of users in a short period. Developing the entire system, including a CRM for florists and an online marketplace, took about six months. This was a challenging task because our ambitions were large, and we lacked experience. We launched the marketplace last August, and in September, we appeared on Click. In the very first days, we faced high user traffic, which sometimes led to server overload.

Challenges

Our first project, OYTickets.uz, became the first online platform for purchasing cinema tickets in Tashkent. We launched during the hype surrounding “Barbenheimer” and quickly gained popularity: within two months, our turnover reached 600 million Uzbek som. We went through the U-Enter: U-Start Acceleration Program, met representatives of Uzbekistan’s startup ecosystem, but ultimately had to shut down due to disagreements with the owner of five cinemas we collaborated with.

After closing OYTickets, it took us about two months to process this unsuccessful experience. Eventually, we decided to discontinue the project and think of a new idea, as by that time we had already formed a team of developers, and we didn’t want to lose these people.

The lessons we learned from OYTickets:

1. It is not advisable to enter markets with a high degree of monopolization, as dependence on a single player can lead to business failure.

2. Launching during a peak sales season is risky — it can create a false impression of the actual market size and startup stability.

3. The financial model must be carefully developed, and decisions should be made based on data rather than intuition.

4. Even having an MVP does not guarantee attracting investment if the team appears insufficiently experienced.

Despite the difficulties, this experience gave us valuable connections in the startup industry, which later helped us in working on OYGUL — a marketplace for flowers and gifts. Approaching this project, we paid special attention to research and careful planning.

Achievements

In November 2024, we learned that we had become semi-finalists in the President Tech Award — Uzbekistan’s main startup competition with a total grant fund of $1 million. Each startup could receive between $30,000 and $100,000 depending on the category and position achieved.

For a month, we carefully prepared for the competition: refining our pitch, making edits, and perfecting our presentation. In December, we took first place in the micro-SaaS category and received a grant of $100,000. This victory not only strengthened our confidence in the project but also provided financial resources for further growth. Now we have the resources to test ambitious hypotheses and reach a new level.

Plans

Our next step is to test the hypothesis of standardizing the flower and gift market in Central Asia. If this approach proves successful, we plan to scale into the MENA region, which shows a 10% annual market growth.