As attacks on Wildberries warehouses in Russia continue, Uzbekistan has signaled it’s ready to bring Kazakhstani entrepreneurs onto Uzum Market. Khamit Kashikov, head of the Kazakhstan E-commerce Entrepreneurs Association, told Forbes Kazakhstan about the development after meeting with Uzum leadership and representatives of the Uzbekistan Sellers Association in Tashkent, where he is currently based.
According to Kashikov, Uzum confirmed its interest in bringing on sellers from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, offering to help with business registration, consult entrepreneurs, and guide them through onboarding onto the platform.
The same support format is already being used with Kyrgyz entrepreneurs — Uzum organized a meeting with them and then set up a dedicated working chat where marketplace staff help resolve business registration and sales launch questions.
Roman Kim, co-founder of the Uzbekistan Sellers Association, told Forbes Kazakhstan that the association has been inviting Kazakhstani businesses to look at the local market for two years now. To get started, a foreign entrepreneur needs to register a sole proprietorship (IP) in Uzbekistan, open a bank account, and register on Uzum Market. The association estimates the whole process takes three to four days. After registering, sellers can turn to the Uzbekistan Sellers Association for help launching their store, with Uzum representatives consulting alongside them.
Kim noted that Kazakhstani sellers on the platform are still few — he personally knows of only one Kazakhstani entrepreneur who has just started working on Uzum — though interest in the market is gradually picking up. There’s a reason for that: according to the association, competition is still low in categories like home goods, kids’ products, sports, tourism, fishing, and auto products, meaning there’s room for new sellers. Competition is highest in the smartphone segment.
Uzum Market has been growing fast in recent years. By the end of 2025, the annual trade volume (GMV) of its e-commerce arm grew 1.5x year-on-year to surpass $500 million, with order volume reaching 34 million. The platform now hosts more than 18,000 sellers, 90% of them small and medium businesses, and the broader Uzum ecosystem’s audience has topped 20 million users. The company expects e-commerce GMV to approach $1 billion by the end of 2026.
A similar process is unfolding next door in Kyrgyzstan: representatives of the local sellers association have held meetings with players in the Uzbek market, and some entrepreneurs have already started paperwork to enter Uzum.
For now, the number of Kazakhstani and Kyrgyz sellers on Uzum remains limited. But if the situation around Wildberries persists, trade flows across the region could get redrawn — and Uzbekistan is trying to position itself not as a transit point, but as an independent destination in that shift.
