IT Park is an organization that helps start-up teams find financing sources and implement their projects, and also promotes domestic IT developments in foreign markets.

About those projects’ IT Park managed to implement during its lifecycle and what prospects await the startup site in the future, Abdulakhad Kuchkarov, IT Park Innovation Director, regional representative of the Swiss investment company Seedstars, member of the board of directors of the educational online platform Khan Academy Uzbek, talks to Kommersant.uz.

- What kind of real support does IT Park provide to startups and young developers?

Firstly, we have incubation and acceleration programs: gifted developers can transform their ideas into business products and develop ongoing projects with the help of legal, accounting and marketing support. We also connect our wards with successful entrepreneurs and experienced specialists who act as mentors and trackers of startup teams. At the end of the acceleration program, teams get a chance to present their product to investors and specialists from the ICT Development Fund.

Secondly, we act as a co-organizer and partner of many startup contests and hackathons, which have considerable prize funds. Thirdly, the IT Academy and the Venture Fund are open at IT Park. IT Academy is a place where everyone can learn programming. We cooperate with many IT companies - this allows us to quickly and efficiently recommend our graduates to the most suitable positions.

Venture Fund of us will invest in information technology projects. The target size of the fund is 10 million US dollars, and its participants will be state funds, international financial institutions, foreign investment companies and other interested private investors. The average investment for each project will be from 25 to 100 thousand dollars.

- How is the legal protection of developments?

- As part of the incubation and acceleration programs, master classes are arranged from experts specializing on the protection of intellectual property.

- What projects are given priority?

- In total, IT Park has 8 areas: Fintech, Medtech, Agrotech, Autotech, E-Gov, E-Commerce, IoT, Online Education. We do not overestimate any sphere, projects are evaluated solely on innovativeness, uniqueness and prospects.

- Tell me about your educational programs?

- As I mentioned earlier, an IT Academy operates under IT Park, which will train everyone in online and offline modes according to international standards. The translation of the Udacity educational platform is now approaching its completion, which provides massive open online courses in four areas: Front End Web Development, Data Analysis, Fullstack Web Development and Android Development.

Udacity arose in 2012 as a result of the expansion of Stanford University's computer science program. Also, additional courses and consultations in these four areas will be organized at the IT Academy. The duration of one course is 3 months.

- What kind of startup projects have already been implemented? What do you think about startups in the country?

- Let us first tell you about the development of our startup teams: thanks to the work of IT Park trackers, the Revisor project has a ready MVP (minimally viable product), this team also introduced its products in an experimental mode at two points in Tashkent. The Delivera team is testing its product and will soon launch food delivery in Tashkent. The team in the Fastago acceleration program is working to increase the users of its system and refine the product. The Arzon Apteka project has also already been implemented and enjoys considerable popularity. By the way, Fastago and Arzon Apteka are currently negotiating with foreign venture funds to attract investments.

If we speak about startups in general: in the past two years in Uzbekistan, interest in the creation and development of startups has been growing at an enviable rate. In many ways, it arose thanks to state support like the benefits, opportunities, and financing that the sector provides. It is still too early to judge startup projects in Uzbekistan, our market is only at the stage of origin, so we can get the first results in 5-6 years. Nevertheless, such projects as MyTaxi, Payme, Click have already been implemented and are very successful in our country.

- What difficulties are most often encountered during startup projects implementation?

- The main "headaches" is, let’s say, a developing ecosystem, a narrow pool of specialists, disinterest of strategic customers in products, lack of funding. To solve all these difficulties, our IT Park was created.

- A couple of years ago, the Mirzo Ulugbek Innovation Center actively strived to establish cooperation with foreign partners. The results were disappointing. What is their mistake, in your opinion? What are you doing? How is your approach different from them?

- IT Park is developing a full-fledged startup ecosystem, this is a large chain that includes all stages - from the birth of programming skills to the search for investors for startups. I think that both MUIC and other startup players are doing everything possible for the technological development of our country. Our approach differs significantly from the others in that only with us a novice entrepreneur can find the whole system of product development. We thought out the whole mechanism for creating and developing startups, so we have an IT Academy, competitions, an incubator, an accelerator, residency, and a Venture Fund.

If we go to the foreign partners, we are currently cooperating with Software Technology Parks of India (New Delhi), Tech Nation (London), Astana Hub (Nur-Sultan) International Technology Park of IT Startups, and IT High-Tech Technology Park -park ”(Kazan), IOOO“ Exadel ”(Minsk), Technopark in the field of high technologies“ IT-park ”(Moscow), High-tech park“ HTP ”(Minsk).

- How did IT specialists react to IT Park when it was launched? How has their attitude changed during its operation - in the positive or negative direction?

- To be honest, we were greeted with a slight sense of skepticism, since initially we did not quite understand why IT Park was necessary for Uzbekistan. However, after a while, when we began to talk about our activities, when achievements, organized competitions and events began to be visible, the opinion of us began to change. Now, most of those who spoke critically about us, on the contrary, speak about the prospects that await us. And we are very pleased that our hard work does not remain in the shadows.

- Can you tell us more about the contests?

- Well, we are co-organizers of 6 competitions: mGovAward - a republican competition among students for the development of the best mobile applications; Open Data Challenge - an annual hackathon competition for developing applications using open data; Ucell Mobile Challenge - a competition for the development of mobile applications for a mobile operator in such areas as a trading application, a useful application for guests and residents of the country, and a Fintech application; Game Jam - competition for creating a game in 48 hours (participants are given a theme on the same day, they are teaming up or developing a game alone from scratch); Sap Up - a competition of social startups and UzAuto Market - a competition of startup projects in three areas: IT, E-Auto and Smart City.

- What benefits has got IT Park, what is already there? What do you want to do?

- According to the State President decree, IT Park residents until January 1, 2028 are exempt from:

Payment of all types of taxes and mandatory contributions to state trust funds, as well as a single social payment;

Payment of customs payments (excluding customs duties) for imported equipment, components, parts, components, technological documentation, software not produced in the republic of uzbekistan, according to lists approved in the established manner.

They can also proceed, within the limits of the proceeds from the export of goods (work, services), the payment of wages to foreign specialists in foreign currency in cashless form to international payment cards opened abroad.

Plus, income received before january 1, 2028 in the form of remuneration of employees under labor contracts with residents of it park:

Subject to personal income tax at a fixed rate of 7.5 percent;

Not included in the total annual income of individuals determined for tax purposes.

- And how do you see IT Park after 10 years?

- We see the theoretical future of IT Park in 10 years of the same dynamic development related to IT sector in Uzbekistan: in two to three years, Uzbekistan will become a technological leader in Central Asia, in five to six years, the first ten large Uzbek IT companies will appear, which began their journey as startups, and in ten years we will have a small IT nation that will produce 30-50 successful startups each year.

- Quite ambitious! We hope everything will be so. And what do you see resident companies in 10 years?

- We already have export-oriented IT companies that are our residents. One of our residents - Revochain technology LLC - a company aimed at the development of transport logistics in other countries. Today they can control all logistics processes in the United States, the team can ensure the safety of each route and the timely delivery of goods. I think that within 10 years, our residents will be able to create their own internal incubators and accelerators, such as Samsung in Korea, to launch new successful startup projects on the market.

Material prepared in cooperation with IT Park.