TrustExam.ai — a Kazakhstani educational technology startup that helps fight cheating during examinations

Yersultan Yermanov, city — Palo Alto, Chief Strategy Officer, LinkedIn

How it all began

Oqylyq.kz / TrustExam.ai is a product that protects the integrity of examinations through artificial intelligence monitoring. The project started in 2018, when Eduard Zaukarnayev and I were creating our own Learning Management System for educational institutions. That was when the name first appeared. But in 2020, with the beginning of the pandemic, everything changed — universities faced a new challenge: how to conduct online examinations with integrity? The answer was Oqylyq.kz and TrustExam.ai in its new format.

A strategic step was taking part in administering the theoretical driving license examination on behalf of a government body. Today, we serve more than 500 000 citizens annually and have already reduced the passing rate by 25 percent, which is a genuine reflection of fighting corruption in the examination system.

Currently, together with the National Testing Center, we are running a pilot project of our system for the Unified National Testing in Kazakhstan.

The startup began with a small team of only five people. Thanks to our previous experience in entrepreneurial projects and our established professional network, we were able to immediately assemble a strong team of proven specialists.

After the pivot in 2020, demand turned out to be so high that the product became cash-flow positive from the very first days. This allowed us to operate without external investments and to grow in a bootstrapped mode.

Clients who were interested in such solutions willingly allowed large-scale pilot projects, which gave us valuable feedback and the opportunity to improve the product quickly. Even after the pandemic ended, we continued steady growth, and in 2023 decided to make this project our main focus and scale it on a national level.

Target audience

We started with a small team of five people. We already had entrepreneurial experience and a strong network, which allowed us to quickly attract professionals.

After the 2020 pivot, demand was so high that the product became cash-flow positive from the very beginning. This gave us the opportunity to develop without external investments, in a fully bootstrapped format.

Clients actively joined pilot projects, which gave us the ability to adapt the product to real-world scenarios. Even after the pandemic, interest in our solution only increased — by 2023 we scaled further and focused on national and international projects.

Incubation and acceleration programs

We have participated in several key incubation and acceleration programs, each of which gave us valuable experience and new opportunities:

Hero Training Draper University — a pre-accelerator in partnership with Astana Hub, a personal development program for founders, and a soft-landing into Silicon Valley.

StartX Stanford University — recognized as the best accelerator in the United States by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this is a community of Stanford University alumni-founders that provides a lifelong professional network and access to society’s resources. Here, we received unique insights about scaling to the North American market. The StartX community has four decacorns, which significantly raised our level of ambition.

Challenges

The biggest mistake at the beginning was adapting to every single client’s requests. With experience we realized: a mature client does not expect you to simply fulfill desires, but to deliver solutions that truly work.

Our advice to newcomers: do not be afraid to say “no” and explain why your product is structured in a specific way. You are the expert — that is exactly why the client came to you.

Achievements

1. Reached annual revenue of 1.4 million United States dollars in 2024, entirely through bootstrapping. We plan to reach 3 million United States dollars by the end of 2025.
2. Served 4 million users between 2020 and 2024, with another 2 million already planned for this year alone.
3. Successfully entered the international market, securing the first contracts and partnerships in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
4. Selected for StartX at Stanford University, Hero Training Draper University, and 500 Global Eurasia as a startup with high growth potential and significant social impact.

Plans

At present, we are actively entering the market of national examinations in North America, the United Kingdom, and Africa. We are already negotiating with local authorities on the digitalization of national examinations.

The United Kingdom plans a modernization of the theoretical driving license examination, similar to the reform in Kazakhstan, and our experience is especially relevant here. We are doing everything possible to become the operator of this process.

Our long-term goal is to scale the technology to the level of entire countries, ensuring stability, security, and high quality in the examination process.