Valery Vavilov: “Kazakhstan has a huge potential”

Valery Vavilov: “Kazakhstan has a huge potential”

Kazakhstan is building a very interesting and efficient infrastructure. “Digital Kazakhstan” initiative is super important for the ecosystem and start-ups. Valery Vavilov, the Co-Founder and CEO of the multi-disciplinary blockchain company Bitfury Group, expressed this opinion during the third annual Global Investment Roundtable (KGIR-2019).

Availability of modern infrastructure is a crucial factor for any investor who considers starting a business in a foreign country. One of the key advantages that Kazakhstan has created is “a single window” for investors. “One of the major thing that inspired our whole team to start doing business in Kazakhstan is the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC). As a startup, we need safety, simplicity and innovation support. We were amazed that everything was ready in the AIFC.” – said Valery Vavilov to the participants of the plenary session of KGIR-2019.     

He also shared his opinion on the main factors that influence investor’s decision making “The most important thing for international business is safety. A single window approach is also very important for driving initiatives,” - he said.

In addition, he emphasised the importance of innovation support. “Today, we are moving from a natural-resource-based economy to a data-driven economy. As a technology company, we want to innovate and create technologies for solving different problems. Talking about the digital economy, on the one hand the world is already digital, but on the other hand, we are still using a lot of paperwork. And I think that “Digital Kazakhstan” initiative launched here is super important for the ecosystem and startups,” – the entrepreneur believes.

“I think that Kazakhstan has a huge potential in the ecosystem that has already been built”. He shared how he was amazed by technologies of the Nazarbayev University when he visited the university for the first time.  

Valery Vavilov also thinks there are two major factors that will be key for any country in future: “The first is human capital, our brains and the second is an access to data. Data right now is growing exponentially. Just over the past two years, humanity accumulated 50% of all data. This is a huge number. That is why a lot of people say that data will be the next oil. Yes, it will be, because startups need data”.

Any government of any country is the major service provider for citizens. While providing thousands of different services to people, Government collects huge amounts of data from different sources. As such, Valery Vavilov, believes that the key is to give to startups the access to data in order to create efficient data storage and management ecosystem in the country. “If we open access to data for startups, they will be able to find the most efficient solutions for different issues”, - he clarified. Since data will be the key, it becomes increasingly important to find ways for data storage and management. Hence, Governments and startups need to establish good collaboration. 

The CEO of Bitfury Group remarked that when we talk about data, we mean data at all levels. For example, now we use different devices for collecting any types of data.

“Data includes not only digital payment systems, as this is only one vertical. Other vertical is, for example, the data that on roads, on traffic jams. Also, data that we collect from households – consumption of electricity, water, gas, etc. I'm talking about the whole amount of data that we use and collect. If the country is able to store all the data in a very efficient way, give access to startups and specify the current problems, startups will be able to use the data and create technologies to process the data and address the problems,” – said Valery Vavilov.   

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