How a Kazakh startup builds a product for marketing and show business without investments

Ramil Akhmetzhanov, city — Almaty, Founder CEO, Instagram

How It All Started

Before founding this startup, I worked in sales for a long time. I worked at a barhola (second-hand market), in companies selling power tools. At the barhola, as you know, you have to fight for every client, literally “chewing out” sales.

I also worked with various artists and large-scale projects. I had to contact a large number of micro-influencers and bloggers, as well as manage music-related public pages where content needed to be posted. A major problem arose: all of this had to be brought together—monitoring who posted what and when, and ensuring everyone correctly understood the technical brief.

This involved dozens, hundreds, and sometimes 200–300 people. A huge amount of work was also related to payments—tracking who needed to be paid and how much, and then sending receipts via direct messages. All of this took a lot of time.

Launching the Startup

That’s when the idea emerged to create a platform where all these people could receive a single technical brief, complete it, report back in the system, and have the platform automatically process payments. Thus, the idea for our platform, ORA, was born. I met with my co-founder, Rifat Iktisamov, and shared the idea with him—he liked it.

Then we found another co-founder, his name is Grigory Kovrizhnykh. Around November last year, we began developing the platform. As for assembling the team: as I mentioned earlier, I found two co-founders. After that, we worked as a trio until approximately March.

We manually recruited influencers—sending them direct messages. Some responded, others didn’t. Once we gathered our first 100–200 users, we immediately began scaling up and didn’t spend long testing or delaying the launch.

Target Audience

Currently, we have about 15,000 users on the platform. The number of clients refers to advertisers. We work with large companies. We have signed NDAs with some of them, so we cannot name specific brands, but among our partners are major artists like Jony and Andro, with whom we have worked and continue to work. We also collaborate with ASCAR Cinema and other companies. A separate mention should be made of our cooperation with Magnum.

Anyone engaged in entrepreneurship is a potential advertiser for us. Additionally, anyone living in Kazakhstan, starting from approximately 18 years old, is also part of our target audience.

Incubation Programs

Currently, we are undergoing acceleration at IRA within MOST. From the IRA acceleration program, we gained many insights that truly helped us in product development. Over this month, we significantly improved our traction, and the program is ending soon.

The startup was initially funded entirely with our own money. To this day, the project continues to develop using self-generated funds.

We have had no external investments. Nevertheless, we currently support a team of eight people and rent a good office in the city center.

On Difficulties

There are many difficulties in our industry. The challenges we face are mainly related to retaining clients and ensuring their satisfaction. This can be difficult, so we address this issue primarily through sales.

We provide users with many tasks to keep them engaged. Essentially, we operate as a task exchange: a person registers, accepts tasks, and completes them. These can be online tasks—such as publishing posts or stories on social media—as well as offline tasks, where someone needs to go somewhere and perform an action. Therefore, we constantly have to generate and distribute tasks to ensure all participants are satisfied. This can perhaps be called a “pleasant problem.”

In the very beginning, the main difficulties were legal issues. These created the most challenges. I would advise beginner startup founders to consult with lawyers and handle accounting from the start. I currently talk with many startups and see the same problem repeatedly—many do not monitor their accounting at all. This can negatively impact the business later on, so it is very important to establish this process from the very beginning.

As for advice for beginner startup founders, I would say this: do not spend years testing a product and trying to perfect it. It is better to enter the market as quickly as possible, offer the product, sell it, and test hypotheses. The most important thing is sales. Only through sales can you understand whether the product works. Even if the product is very good, without sales, no one needs it.

Also, from market observations: many startups, especially in the early stages, share the same problem. Strong technical teams often do not know how to sell their product. As a result, even a good product may fail simply because there are no sales.

Therefore, my advice to startup founders is simple: if you are not strong in sales, find someone who is. Either bring them into the team or make them a co-founder. Because in reality, it is important not only what you build but also how you sell it. If the product sells, it means it works.

Achievements

The key achievement of the startup is cooperation with major clients and advertisers. They trusted us with implementing their projects, and we, in turn, confirmed our expertise and ability to deliver results.

Regarding personal achievements, my professional journey began in the music industry. One significant result was participating in the creation of the music group “Miamoza,” whose release entered the top 100 of Russia’s music charts and reached the 30th position, maintaining its place in the rankings.

It is also worth noting experience working with international artists. Specifically, we are in negotiations with the team of Morandi—the performer of the global hit “Angels.” At the current stage, the cooperation is in the final stage of term agreement.

Among current projects is expansion into new markets. We have started operations in Uzbekistan, where we are handling PR support for John Legend’s concert. Simultaneously, we are developing activities in the Russian Federation market, collaborating with Valeria and Iosif Prigozhin.

These projects are important stages in the company’s development, as they allow us to strengthen our position in the international market and expand our network of professional contacts in the music industry.

Plans

Plans for the rest of the year include attracting investments and further scaling into other countries. The main goal is entering the US market.

In the near future, we are focusing on regional expansion: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and neighboring markets.

Separately, we are currently moving toward full automation of advertising processes. In this context, a new role with the working title “ORA-tologist” may emerge. The idea is that targetologists (ad targeting specialists) will be able to work through the platform as simply as possible: assembling a campaign, setting parameters, and launching it with literally one button—the system will then handle everything automatically.