The most high-profile event of the past two months in Uzbekistan’s startup ecosystem has come to an end. The Grand Demo Day of the Startup Garage accelerator took place at the “School 21” innovative education center. Out of 200 applicant startups, only the top 9 successfully passed the selection process to pitch their projects — and the numbers speak for themselves: $95,000 in soft commitments were signed in a single evening.
The two-month intensive program — consisting of mentorship sessions, pitch training, and product testing phases — allowed startups to refine not just their ideas, but their business models as well. On Demo Day, they defended their results in front of venture capital funds, business angels, and industry experts.
The largest investment — $50,000 — was secured by Safora (saforatravel.com). The startup offers a unified ecosystem platform for hotels, featuring a cloud-based Property Management System (PMS) and an AI-concierge assistant. Guests can book rooms, order taxis, make restaurant reservations, and exchange currency all through a single app, while the hotel earns revenue from SaaS subscriptions and commission fees.
Savat (savat.app) raised $25,000 — an AI shopping aggregator that consolidates over 300 Uzbek e-commerce platforms into a single interface. Tracking price history, discount notifications, and marketplace integration are its core competitive advantages.
Rounding out the top three is RentZor (rentzor.uz) with $20,000. It is the first P2P rental marketplace in Uzbekistan — a platform for renting out and borrowing equipment, tech, and other items, secured by MyID verification and digital contracts. The business model charges a 10% commission from both sides on every transaction.
These commitments are not final deals, but rather the initial step indicating clear investor interest; the projects will move to official rounds after the Due Diligence phase. However, for today’s ecosystem, this signal is highly significant on its own: three local startups raised a total of $95,000 in a single day.
The event was organized in partnership with School 21, Asaxiy.uz, Bellissimo Pizza, Hambi, and Pivot.
