President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev visited Tech Garden

On October 29, within the framework of a working visit to Almaty, the President of the country Kassym-Jomart Tokayev visited the Autonomous Cluster Fund Tech Garden, where he got acquainted with the activities of the Fund, the Technology Development Centers (laboratory complexes in the form of a joint venture) created by him, as well as startups that were accelerated with the support of Tech Garden …

Tech Garden, according to the instructions of the First President, is forming a high-tech innovation cluster in Almaty (step 63 of the “Plan of the Nation”) — uniting subjects of educational, research and industrial-innovative activities.

For a year and a half, Tech Garden — under the auspices of the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan — has been implementing the StartUp Kazakhstan international acceleration program. Initially, it was aimed at creating a critical mass of high-tech companies in the small and medium-sized business market.

Acceleration begins with diagnostics of each startup, after which an individual plan for its development and a targeted educational program are drawn up, which lasts 3 months. A feature of the Tech Garden acceleration program is a separate component for “pumping” the technological part of a startup product. Each team is assigned a coach who sets tasks and monitors progress on a daily basis.

An international venture fund Tech Garden Ventures was created to finance and attract investments in startups. Program participants receive funding — up to 31 thousand US dollars. All startups sign an investment agreement and open an LLP in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The money is transferred to the accounts of these LLPs, and, according to the terms of the agreement, the start-up companies spend the received investments only on the development of their product in Kazakhstan.

These are the initial investments that create a venture capital story for a startup. Both during and after acceleration, Tech Garden holds meetings with venture capitalists and the corporate sector in order to attract more serious investments to mature startups. In total, about 1 billion tenge was invested in startups.

The first and second waves of the StartUp Kazakhstan program took place in 2018, the third — in 2019. More than 3,000 startups from Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, Poland, the USA, Norway, Uzbekistan applied for participation in them. As a result of a thorough expert selection, 96 startups (on average 45% from Kazakhstan and 55% from other countries) underwent acceleration. In 2018, startups of the 1st and 2nd waves created 250 jobs. All projects showed results, some gave an increase of 200-300%. There are companies that, with ideas developed here, went to Singapore, Malaysia, enter the US markets, and the European markets.

Now Tech Garden is changing its policy in favor of the corporate sector. Previously, ACF supported startups in search of investors, the investor was offered prototypes or ideas. Now, as part of the digital transformation of the industry, it is planned to accelerate them up to the introduction of the startup’s product into the industry. The market is changing and Kazakhstani companies are interested in modernization as soon as possible. The corporate sector wants to see ready-made solutions that can be implemented in six months.

This suggests that an average of $ 100-200 thousand needs to be invested in one startup in order for it to become practically a subject of small and medium-sized businesses, to know how to work with taxes and sell its product. Companies do not want to consider an idea for a long time, do not invest in long-term research. Everyone is waiting for the finished product. It is desirable that the technology already have valid implementation contracts.

For example, one of Tech Garden’s startups, CableWalker, is currently at the pilot stage, which has received an order for pilot maintenance of two five-kilometer sections of 110 kilovolt lines in the southern region of Kazakhstan. The team proposed to energy companies a project for remote monitoring and repair of power grids using an unmanned aerial vehicle. This is the implementation of one of the points of the state program “Digital Kazakhstan” on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for monitoring and repairing networks.

In addition, Tech Garden has extensive experience in the effective application of such a mechanism as financing R&D projects at the expense of 1% of the Total annual income (or production costs) of subsoil users. R&D is Research and development work, the totality of which is aimed at obtaining new knowledge and practical application when creating a new product or technology. To date, more than 40 subsoil users of Kazakhstan have consolidated 7 billion tenge, financed 112 production projects in the amount of 5.8 billion tenge.

Now, within the framework of the tasks set by the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the digital transformation of the industry, Tech Garden is developing an algorithm where, at the expense of 1%, the resources of more mature startups will be used to solve the problems of the mining and metallurgical and oil and gas sectors.

As part of the implementation of the 63 steps of the Plan of the Nation, the Fund, together with leading TNCs, created three Technological Development Centers: in the direction of Industry 4.0 using the industrial platform of artificial intelligence; on New Materials and Additive Technologies; on Informatization of construction. In cooperation with TNK IBM and Colvir Software Solutions (UK), the Center for Intelligent Systems Blockchain & Big Data Lab is being created.

These laboratories already have unique developments and experience in integrating smart solutions into the industry at the mining and metallurgical complex. For example, the implementation by the Digital Industry Center “Intellisense LAB” of the brains.app artificial intelligence platform to optimize the grinding scheme on the basis of the Aktogay gold recovery plant of JSC “AK Altynalmas”. Our Centers can develop similar solutions for oil fields and refineries.

In addition, through laboratories, our startups gained access to industrial-grade platforms and acquired the necessary qualifications and reached the bar of current standards in such conservative industries as the mining and metallurgical complex or the oil and gas sector. The result of this integration was the opportunity to enter foreign markets.

This is the fastest, most effective model — to do a pilot project with a multinational company here in the country, achieve a result, board this company and use the network that multinational companies have to scale their product in international markets. This allows you to very quickly enter any market. In addition, TNCs operate in accordance with international standards. Therefore, our companies must comply with these standards.

In addition, over the years of its existence, ACF has developed a unique asset. In fact, an Innovation Cluster was created, which combined the capabilities of 284 organizations, including: 23 universities, 25 research institutes, 2 technoparks, 1 development institute, 166 FEZ “PIT” companies, 66 organizations included in accordance with the rules for the examination of participants' projects approved by The Steering Committee, and 1 joint investment fund.

In addition, about 50 companies are located in the IT quarter created by the Tech Garden, which has become a point of attraction for innovations in the city of Almaty. Among them are the most progressive companies in the IT sphere, such as the First Credit Bureau, EPAM, the Attractor School forge of personnel and many others, as well as our best startups. The synergy that has arisen between the companies creates new opportunities for the innovative development of Kazakhstan.

The Autonomous Cluster Fund (ACF) Tech Garden is a state organization established by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Chairman of the ACF Steering Committee is the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Tech Garden innovation cluster is a professional environment for the development of innovations demanded by industry and business.

Contacts: Tatiana Napolskaya, +7 (707) 652-40-55