Top Stories March 20: Kazakh EV charging station provider Adele Energy eyes EU market

UKRAINE

DressX, a Los Angeles-based startup with Ukrainian founders offering digital tools for clothes designers, has raised $15 million from investors. The money will be spent on the DressX’s mobile app, the interoperability of digital assets as well as the company’s non-fungible token (NFT). [Source: Venture Beat]

Ukraine-based SET University started offering courses in cybersecurity, including free training from IBM. The courses are supplemented by other resources such as books, educational videos, blogs, and podcasts. [Source: TechUkraine] 

UZBEKISTAN

Uzbekistan needs more commercial banks that would be ready to implement digitized financial tools, CEO and founder of Uzbekistan’s payment system OSON Farkhod Makhmudov said in an interview. He also noted the national fintech regulation has been significantly simplified over the last three years paving the way for more advanced digitized financial services to emerge and attract investments. [Source: Kapital.uz]

The government of Uzbekistan issued a decree on provision of bank loans for young people studying IT professions. The loans will be given for a four-year period to those who study at non-government education establishments. [Source: Youngy Uzbekiston]

KAZAKHSTAN

Kazakhstan-based Adele Energy, maker of charging stations for electric cars, is planning to start production in the European Union. Among other plans is an initial public offering (IPO) in 2030-2033 at NASDAQ. [Source: Kapital.kz]

Kazakhstan is ready to join GovStack, an initiative by the International Communication Union (ICU), to promote digital services across the globe and eliminate barriers to building common and compatible infrastructure in various countries. The country proposed ICU to establish a Digital Solutions Center to accumulate and share experience of different states in the field of digitalization. [Source: telegram channel Bloqcain-Central Asia]

Bank-as-a-Service (BaaS), which is when a company can integrate a bank’s service in its own product through an application programming interface (API), is increasing in Kazakhstan. The trend is driven by the rising popularity of financial digital services in the country. [Source: RBC]

STARTUPS

British startup Arrival, developing electric delivery vans, founded by former Russian top official Denis Sverdlov, got a $300 million investment from Westwood Capital. The company that has recently enacted a hiring and spending freeze aims to start production of vehicles in the USA next year. [Source: TechCrunch]

Russian investment company Kirov Group Ventures bought a 4.1% share in Russia-founded Singapore-based FinTech startup Ivitech that specializes in helping bank services-stripped companies get bank loans. Ivitech, now active in Russia and Indonesia, developed a scoring system that values the credibility of a company thus making it transparent for a bank and enhancing the chances for a loan. [Source: VC]

SANCTIONS

US exchanges NASDAQ and NYSE are going to delist several companies of Russian origin, including Internet giant Yandex, online retailer Ozon, hiring service HeadHunter, payment system Qiwi and real estate agency Cian. Trading of American depositary  receipts (ADR) of these companies were suspended a year ago after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. [Source: TechCrunch]  

India, which Russia officially treats as a “friendly country,” will not violate the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US, the European Union, Canada, Australia and some other states. Among other things, compliance with the sanctions will see purchase of Russian oil under the price cap terms of no more than $60 per barrel. [Source: Bloomberg] 

The number of Russians who relocated to Armenia in 2022 due to Russia’s war against Ukraine was around 110,000 persons. Their business activity and spending brought an additional $3 billion to the national economy, which is nearly one quarter of the country’s gross domestic product growth rate of 12% last year. [Source: Vedomosti]

FINANCE

Russian banks have designed their own solutions, so that local iPhone users could make contactless payments without using the Apple Pay technology that’s not available in Russia anymore. Banks introduced their own “stickers” put on the back side of the iPhone or QR-codes. [Source: Twitter account of journalist Jonny Tickle]

A few banks of Havana, the capital of Cuba, started to accept bank cards issued by the Russian payment system Mir, a Russian alternative to Visa and MasterCard that have abandoned Russia. Cardholders can get money from automated teller machines (ATM) in peso, but cannot still pay with cards at shops, restaurants, etc. [Source: TASS]More than 88% of 11 500 surveyed clients of crypto exchange Binance in the states of the former Soviet Union – Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and some other countries – will go on using cryptocurrencies in the future. And more than 40% of the respondents see crypto as an attractive asset for investment. [Source: telegram channel Bloqchain – Central Asia]