How was the Tumaris.Tech Expo

On March 11, 2023, the Astrum IT Academy hosted the Central Asian Startup Exhibition Tumaris.Tech Expo, where 17 startup projects that participated in the Tumaris.Tech program were presented.

The exhibition was opened with a welcoming speech by Advisor to the Minister of Digital Technologies Kamola Sobirova, who noted the importance of the presence of girls and women in the IT field.  This inspired IT Park, USAIDʼs Entrepreneurship and Business Environment Development Project, and Digital Operator Beeline in Uzbekistan to create a project aimed at supporting and developing womenʼs IT initiatives. This is how the Tumaris.Tech project was born, which over the course of several years of its existence reached the Central Asian level and received international recognition.

Sanobar Khudaybergenova, USAID Uzbekistan Development Outreach and Communications Specialist, stressed in her speech that the 21st century is blurring gender boundaries in many areas of activity. And the IT sector, which was previously considered predominantly male, today opened its doors to women, providing opportunities for learning, development and doing business, and the Tumaris.Tech program has become a platform for womenʼs initiatives.

Further, the CEO of Beeline in Uzbekistan, Andzej Malinowski, made a speech. He noted that Uzbekistan has entered a new stage in the development of the ICT industry, and development always implies high-quality education and training of specialists. The Tumaris.Tech project not only provides women with equal access to and participation in IT, but also helps them gain confidence in their strengths and abilities. Thanks to the participation in the project, dozens of women were able to fulfill their dreams – to turn an idea into a successful startup.

The opening ceremony was completed by IT Park Deputy Director Abdulahad Kuchkarov, who presented the activities of Tumaris.Tech. He shared the success of the project. So, for the entire time of its existence, the program has implemented: 113 start-up projects; more than 200 IT-trained students; 70 trained in investments; 30 prepared trackers; 68 developed prototypes at hackathons.

After that, a conference dedicated to the development opportunities for women in technology entrepreneurship began. The speakers of the conference were:

• George Held – Director of Digital Products of the Veon group with the topic “Trends in the global IT market”;
• Rano Sidikova – Affiliate Relations Manager at Plug and Play Uzbekistan, with the topic “Impact of women’s startup projects on the global market”;
• Rada Islamova – founder of the Wonder Women womenʼs community, with the topic “How can a woman entrepreneur fight gender stereotypes?”.

The conference was followed by an awards ceremony for the best startup projects. The winners were:

• in the Fast Scaling nomination – the EasyStep project;
• in the Investment Drive nomination – ADU24;
• in the Top Demand nomination – the company Happy.kg;
• in the Deep Dive nomination – startup DermaMarker;
• in the The Most Caring nomination – the Mavi Jobs project.

Within the framework of the event, the program partners were also awarded: the USAID project for the development of entrepreneurship and business environment;  digital operator Beeline in Uzbekistan, international womenʼs community Wonder Women, TBC Bank and Huawei.

After that, a startup battle between 10 projects started:

• IbnSino is a project that provides solutions for the digitalization of business processes in the VHI market.
• Immuniguide – which determines a personʼs immunity by a blood test.
• Dassyor is a marketplace for the sale and delivery of products.
• Happy.kg is a marketplace that provides customers with the opportunity to buy goods by installments without coming to bank offices and stores.
• Vegan.uz is a service for the production and delivery of vegan dishes and desserts.
• OshMe is a guide to restaurants, coffee shops, bars and pubs.
• TTS.uz is a Telegram bot that converts an entry in Uzbek into text and vice versa.
• Botcommerce is a social commerce platform that helps small and medium merchants increase conversions, sales and customer satisfaction.
• EasyStep is an innovative solution that trains IT specialists.
• QBit is a constructor that teaches you how to program, make gadgets and robots, and helps you understand how science works.

According to the voting results of the jury members, the OshMe project became the winner.

Startup founder Taufik Khisamov shared his impressions of the event:

“OshMe is a restaurant guide that helps you attract customers to your establishments and help users save money.

We, as a project that has existed for a little less than a year, were able to get into the AloqaTechLab accelerator, where we received a lot of useful information, and as part of the Tumaris competition, we made it to the final and even became winners. We were pleased that the project was appreciated. Itʼs nice to know that weʼve created something useful. We built our project as a useful tool for users and businesses. That is, in this way we developed two niches - small and medium-sized businesses in the face of restaurants, and helped users find interesting establishments. The project also serves as a kind of advertisement for Tashkent and other cities.  It gives tourists the opportunity to get acquainted with the map of restaurants, which helps to better know the culture of the city and integrate.  Thanks to todayʼs event, we received a lot of attention, for which we want to say a huge thank you to the organizers!”

It should be noted that girls from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan presented their projects at the exhibition. These are the projects:

• DermaMarker is a platform that scans pigmented skin lesions on the body and analyzes their danger using a neural network;
• ADU24 is a multi-category platform offering a high level of service and a wide range of products and services;
• Immuniguide is a technology for the mass determination of a personʼs immune status by mathematical processing of digital indicators of a general blood test;
• Birge is an app that helps to cope with mental health problems;
• Mavi is a job search and recruitment service that creates employment opportunities for socially vulnerable groups;
• EasyStep is an app that allows you to get acquainted with professions in the IT field, take tests on topics, study according to selected teaching methods and find experts for mentoring;
• We in Crypto is a decentralized autonomous organization whose activities include increasing the digital financial literacy of women and youth, launching NFT collections and running incubation programs for startups initiated by women and youth in the Web3 field;
• MyHealth is an assistant app for health and quality of life;
• Tilzone is the first online language platform in Kyrgyzstan that offers an effective method of learning foreign languages ​​on its own platform with a complete infrastructure;
• Happy.kg is a marketplace that allows merchants to sell their products through the platform, customers to buy and pay in cash and non-cash, as well as in installments or credit;
• Growy Me is a system for helping you achieve your goals through AI coaching, interactive motivation tools and support;
• Ayol Uchun is a platform that changes the outlook on life, education and personal growth for millions of women;
• GradUz is a platform aimed at improving the quality in the field of education and providing conditions for self-realization of students;
• My Dars is an online platform for finding tutors;
• Tutor ON is an online language school with a focus on corporate learning;
• IbnSino is an app for buying a VHI policy online and making an appointment with a doctor;
• Vegan.uz is production and delivery of semi-finished products for a healthy life.

The Tumaris.Expo exhibition was the result of the work that has been done over the entire period of the Central Asian project “Tumaris.Tech” and IT Park. “Tumaris.Tech” does not end there. The project will scale, develop and improve its position in order to develop womenʼs entrepreneurship in the region.