ASTANA – Astana Hub CEO Magzhan Madiyev wrapped up the outcomes of their work in 2023 in his Telegram post on Jan. 8. The Astana Hub organized 446 events attended by 19,457 guests last year.
Photo credit: the-steppe
Some 3,183 students received grants to study at IT schools in Kazakhstan under the Tech Orda program, and 2,217 more schoolchildren and students completed Startup Academy, Startup School, No code/Low code School, Freelance School and Beta Career intensive and educational programs.
According to Madiyev, an agreement was signed to open an Apple Training Center at the Astana Hub to teach Swift development.
Last year marked the start of the export of educational programs to Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine. A free IT-Aiel (aiel translates as a woman in Kazakh) program has been created for women who want to master an IT specialty and earn money as a freelancer. One hundred twenty-two participants completed their training and presented their final projects at the Astana Hub.
A section has been created on the hub’s website, offering more than 200 courses in IT. Last year, regional IT hubs have been launched in 14 regions of Kazakhstan.
Business programs
Graduates of Techpreneurs, Startup Garage, Scalerator, Global Outsourcer acceleration and incubation programs made sales worth 455 million tenge (US$1 million). In total, Silkway Accelerator graduates attracted $15 million in investments.
Thanks to sponsors and partners, the prize fund of the annual Astana Hub Battle has increased to $125,000. The third stream of the Seed Money program has also kicked off.
Eleven startups selected for funding from Astana Hub will receive up to 10 million tenge (US$22,085).
Corporate innovation
GameDev Center and Playrix, Mytona and G5 Games organized more than 40 conferences, lectures and meetups. The Astana Hub and the Omnium educational center held an incubation program, as a result of which seven demo versions of the game were released. Five of them are still working. For the first time, the Turkish We Play Ventures venture fund came to Astana.
The Astana Hub became the first partner of Draper Startup House in Central Asia. Owing to this, for the first time, startups underwent the Hero Training acceleration program in Silicon Valley, developed by Draper University. One of the participants, CITIX, received a $1 million investment from Tim Draper.
