Early stage · Pre-seed to Series A

Capital for the steppe economy.

Altai Fund writes the first institutional cheque for founders building across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia — a market of 85 million people, and the thinnest venture pipeline of any region its size.

Fund I · $40M 2021 — present Almaty · Tashkent · Ulaanbaatar

Almaty, KZ

43.24° N / 76.89° E

Head office. The region's deepest engineering pool and the only market with a functioning local angel layer.

$320MVenture capital deployed across Central Asia in 2025 — a record, and still less than a single mid-size US round.

31%Organic year-on-year growth once 2025's two mega-deals are stripped out.

4.6Funded startups per million residents. Estonia clears 200.

85%Of regional deals sit at pre-seed and seed. Series A is where the market breaks.

Thesis

The infrastructure is finished. The software isn't.

Central Asia spent the last decade laying rails: national payment switches, digital ID, instant transfers, customs unions, fibre to secondary cities. Kaspi in Kazakhstan and Uzum in Uzbekistan proved that a single well-built consumer product can take a country in five years.

What did not follow is the second layer — the unglamorous software that lets a 40-person logistics company, a regional clinic, or a family manufacturer actually run on those rails. That layer is being built now, mostly by founders in their late twenties, mostly without a lead investor in the room.

We are that lead. We write $250K to $1.5M as the first institutional money in, we take a board seat, and we stay through the Series A gap that ends most companies here — because there is no one on the other side of it yet.

We are not a diaspora fund parked in Dubai. Partners live in Almaty, Tashkent and Ulaanbaatar, work in Kazakh, Uzbek, Russian, Mongolian and English, and have shipped and sold companies in these markets before raising this one.

Geography

Five markets, one corridor.

Select a city on the map above to read what we look for there. Below: how we weight each market.

Kazakhstan: Anchor market — 45% of the fund$209M of the region's 2025 venture volume landed here. Deepest talent, real acquirers, AI-heavy dealflow. Almaty for engineering, Astana for regulated fintech.
Uzbekistan: Fastest compounding — 30%37 million people, median age 28, venture volume up 11x since 2022 and still 85% local money. The consumer market the region has been waiting for.
Mongolia: Underpriced — 10%Small population, unusually high digital penetration and a mining economy that buys industrial software. Few competitors on the cap table.
Kyrgyzstan & Tajikistan: Talent arbitrage — 10%Engineering cost base 40% below Almaty, strong outsourcing culture, natural back offices for regional companies.
Corridor & diaspora: Opportunistic — 5%Baku, Ashgabat and Central Asian founders operating from Warsaw, Istanbul or Dubai while selling back into the region.

What we back

Six places where the second layer gets built.

We are generalists inside a narrow geography, not the other way round. If your company doesn't fit a line below but sells into these markets, write anyway.

Payments & embedded finance

Money that moves at local speed

Acquiring for merchants under 50 staff, payouts to gig workers, BNPL underwritten on local credit data, treasury for companies operating in three currencies at once.

Trade & logistics software

The corridor as a product

Freight matching, customs and certification workflow, warehouse and last-mile systems for a region where 60% of goods still cross a border to reach the buyer.

Applied AI

Models tuned to Turkic languages

Voice and document handling in Kazakh, Uzbek and Mongolian; support automation for banks and telcos; vertical copilots for firms that will never hire an ML team.

Industrial & resource tech

Software for the extraction economy

Mine planning, fleet and fuel telemetry, grid and irrigation monitoring, compliance reporting — sold to the buyers who actually hold the region's budgets.

SME operating systems

Boring software, unbuilt here

Accounting, payroll, inventory and CRM built for local tax codes and local labour law, replacing the spreadsheet-and-Telegram stack that runs most of the region.

Health & education access

Distribution over invention

Diagnostics logistics, pharmacy supply, clinic software, and credentialed training that moves people into the jobs these companies are creating.

How we invest

Terms, in public.

Founders in this region negotiate against term sheets they've never seen before. Ours are published so the conversation starts at the same place for everyone.

Stage: Pre-seed and seedOccasionally a pre-product team we already know. Never a bridge into a round we didn't lead.
First cheque: $250,000 — $1,500,000Median entry $600K.
Ownership: 8 — 15%We lead or co-lead. We do not ask for a majority, a veto over hiring, or founder share transfers.
Reserves: 50% of the fundHeld for follow-on. Our average portfolio company raises its next round from us plus one outside lead.
Instrument: SAFE or priced equityEnglish-law holding structure, usually via AIFC in Astana. We pay for the incorporation.
Board: One seat, one independentMonthly for the first year, then quarterly. We do not take observer swarms.
Time to decision: 30 days, maximumA no comes with the reason and, where we can, a warm intro to whoever should have said yes.

Day 0 — 5

First call

Thirty minutes with a partner, not an analyst. Deck optional; a working product beats one.

Week 2

Partnership review

You present once to all four partners. We share our internal memo with you afterwards, unedited.

Week 2 — 4

Diligence

Customer calls, code and data review, local legal. We tell you every reference we plan to call.

Day 30

Terms & close

Term sheet, then funds in the account within three weeks of signature.

Portfolio

Twenty-two companies, six markets.

Company	What they do	Market	Stage	First cheque
Tenge Rails	Acquiring and payouts for merchants too small for a bank relationship	Kazakhstan	Series A	2022
Qoshkar	Fleet telemetry and fuel accounting for mining and haulage operators	Kazakhstan	Series A	2022
Bozor OS	Inventory, tax and payroll for Uzbek retail chains under 200 staff	Uzbekistan	Seed	2023
Karvon	Customs documentation and certification workflow across the corridor	Uzbekistan	Seed	2023
Ovoo Labs	Kazakh, Uzbek and Mongolian speech models for contact centres	Mongolia	Seed	2023
Steppe Freight	Load matching and settlement for independent long-haul drivers	Kazakhstan	Seed	2024
Ala-Too Health	Diagnostics logistics and clinic software for secondary cities	Kyrgyzstan	Pre-seed	2024
Nomin Grid	Load and outage monitoring for regional distribution utilities	Mongolia	Pre-seed	2024
Dala Agro	Irrigation telemetry and yield forecasting for grain cooperatives	Kazakhstan	Pre-seed	2025
Sarbon Pay	Cross-border payouts for the region's four million migrant workers	Tajikistan	Pre-seed	2025
Qala Credit	Underwriting infrastructure built on national payment-switch data	Uzbekistan	Pre-seed	2026

11 of 22 shown · remainder undisclosed at founders' request

Partnership

Four partners. All of them operators first.

Aizhan Serikova

Managing Partner · Almaty

Built and sold a payment gateway serving 9,000 Kazakh merchants. Twelve years in regional fintech, six of them regulated.

Otabek Rashidov

Partner · Tashkent

Ran commercial at one of Uzbekistan's first marketplace platforms from 40 to 900 staff. Now covers consumer and commerce.

Batbayar Erdene

Partner · Ulaanbaatar

Fifteen years in mining operations and industrial software procurement. Leads everything we do in resources and energy.

Nurgul Asanova

Partner, Platform · Bishkek

Engineering leader turned talent partner. Runs hiring, technical diligence and the fund's engineering network across four countries.

Founders

Send us the thing you've built.

No warm introduction required — roughly a third of our portfolio came in cold. Write in Kazakh, Uzbek, Russian, Mongolian or English. Every message is read by a partner, and you get an answer either way within five working days.

startups@altai.fund · Almaty · Tashkent · Ulaanbaatar