From a village to global AI, Samandar Tursunaliev reflects Uzbekistan’s tech rise

2 days ago

From a village to global AI, Samandar Tursunaliev reflects Uzbekistan’s tech rise

At 25, Samandar Tursunaliev is turning Uzbekistan’s AI ideas into reality. From a small village to a growing startup, his work shows how young innovators are shaping the country’s digital future.

In partnership with Center for the Production of Content for Mass Media under the Administration of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan

READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/12/26/from-a-village-to-global-ai-samandar-tursunaliev-reflects-uzbekistans-tech-rise

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Transcript

00:00now in Uzbekistan you can see like very big change for us for IT startups we don't have

00:11borders we don't have like logistics problems we can expand to any part of the world my name

00:23Salanda I'm 25 years old our startup is to empower like workforce of big corporates what we are doing

00:30is we are adding AIs into you know like workforce of the human and then by this way they are like

00:37efficiency is growing like 200 300 percentage now CottoBi is serving or 60 customers and then

00:45in this customers list we have the biggest names

00:53we were like working with journalists and then they you know like they would do interview

01:01and then after the interview they have to write down what I've said like in the interview right

01:06and then in order to create an article it would take so much time so let's say we said okay let's

01:11do speech to text model which is it will listen to the audio and then it will give the transcription

01:16and then we gave you out our first product and then our first product was very bad

01:22very very bad and but anyway you know like we kept working on it working on it working on it

01:28and then after sometimes you know once it's like acceptable not like good now like now acceptable then

01:35like one of the big company starts using it like big names in the news and then you know like as we

01:43did one project some company starts coming to us and asked you know like use you guys have AI engineers

01:50and then we have this type of problem can you solve it when we approach big companies when

01:55they showed our agents the user was the employee and then they were afraid because they thought you

02:02know like they're gonna they are being replaced when we approach companies they are very careful

02:06like they always explain look guys we are not here to replace anybody but you will get replaced it if

02:13you don't use AI because some other guy is gonna come to your company who can use AI very well

02:18and then he will his performance is going to exceed your performance maybe three or five times

02:24I came from like small village very small village next to Kyrgyzstan border maybe one or two kilometers and

02:38I grew up in a very like moderate way and then I went to South Korea as many other students but I

02:48dropped out and I came back if you look at my history past yes you know like hard childhood so

02:55because of this hardship you know like we have a hunger in Uzbekistan when I came back to Uzbekistan

03:00everybody said I'm crazy because imagine coming back from like South Korea developed country whoever

03:07said to me Uzbekistan is developing it's very far behind what you're gonna do you need to turn this

03:14disappointment into advantage to be honest our president he has done like a lot to our startups

03:26for example two years ago he organized president tech award and then we won 50k and then from that 50k

03:33we are grown into this one opportunity now is growing and growing there are so many tax advantages for

03:40IT startups believe it or not we only pay one percent of our income so if you compare it to other

03:47world even Dubai it's not like this so I would say if you want to do like AI startups in Uzbekistan it is

03:54the best place to do it now at IT Park we met the president he came at me he was calling my name and

04:00then there was no like kind of name tag or anything so I said okay president is paying too much attention to IT

04:07to IT because he's remembering like who is doing AI now like most of the young generation they're

04:14already dreaming about doing a startup because we understand in Uzbekistan you know like we are double

04:21landlocked in order to improve our GDP you know like think about like exporting some loads my future

04:28plan I want to expand it to our region so first it's gonna be our neighbors and then I'm thinking about

04:35like in six or seven months we will look at the Mina and yes hopefully in one year we would move to

04:43us and then like start operating there because it's one of the biggest markets my focus now is to build up

04:51my team like very compatible with international market

From a village to global AI, Samandar Tursunaliev reflects Uzbekistan’s tech rise

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