"Operating in a Smaller Market Is an Advantage": Kaspi's Founder on Plans for AI and Turkey
On the Fintech Leaders podcast, Kaspi CEO Mikhail Lomtadze discussed the company’s focus on Turkey, its plans to grow its user base to 100 million people, its AI assistant, and what could change investors’ perception of the company.
AI Assistant
Most of the podcast is devoted to the company’s new product — a digital assistant that was unveiled on July 1. Kasper helps users make decisions: it compares options, summarizes reviews, and highlights differences between products—it handles the entire process right up until the item is added to the cart.
“We treat our assistant like a person. He’s a consultant in a specific field. You walk into a store, ask the person a question, and they give you simple explanations and are essentially trying to help you make the right purchase for you. And you don’t have to press any buttons—we hope that over time there will be even fewer of them, and the process will become purely conversational.”
It took about nine months to develop Kasper—roughly the same amount of time, according to Lomtadze, that a fintech team typically spends on creating major products, including e-commerce, travel services, and super apps. “Operating in a smaller market is also an advantage,” he notes. It’s easier to launch the product, test it in practice, and refine it for an audience of 20 million people than to scale it immediately to hundreds of millions of users, where “you won’t get anywhere, but you’ll spend a fortune.”
Over time, Kaspi plans to integrate Kasper into other stages of the purchasing process—such as choosing a seller, delivery, and payment methods—and then expand it to other features of the app, including banking transactions, government services, and so on.
Entry into the Turkish Market
Kaspi currently has about 25 million users in Kazakhstan and Turkey, and according to Lomtadze, the company’s long-term goal is to grow this audience to 100 million people. He sees Turkey, whose population is more than four times that of Kazakhstan, as playing a key role in this growth.
Kaspi entered the Turkish market in January 2025 by acquiring a 65.41% stake in the Hepsiburada marketplace. In the first phase following the deal, the company focused on developing the marketplace itself: delivery speed, navigation, search, personalization, and data quality. According to Lomtadze, the number of orders is growing by approximately 20–25% per month. Kaspi’s next step in the Turkish market is expected to be the launch of financial services—in July, the company completed the acquisition of Turkey’s Rabobank.
According to Lomtadze, the main difference between the Turkish market and the Kazakhstani market is that most of the products on Hepsiburada are manufactured domestically, whereas in Kazakhstan, many product categories—such as clothing and electronics—are still imported.
At the same time, he notes that Kazakhstan has a higher penetration rate for digital services. Kaspi plans to bring some of the solutions already developed in Kazakhstan to Turkey, while also introducing certain Turkish solutions to the Kazakhstani market. As a result, the company is gradually shifting from developing separate solutions for each country to a “global product” designed for both markets simultaneously. Lomtadze says that Turkey gives the company the opportunity to “start looking outward.”
Market Assessment
Podcast host Miguel Armas asked Lomtadze what might explain the fact that “over the past couple of years, the company’s revenue has nearly doubled, but its stock price has not.” Lomtadze explained that investors view Kaspi as a business dependent on a relatively small market. Furthermore , “investors don’t realize” that the company has never raised external investment.
“The stock price is influenced by various constraints and factors... We believe that if we execute our plans just as we have done in the past; if we are successful (and we will be successful) with our user-focused AI technologies... And once we successfully replicate this business model in Turkey—the stock price will follow suit.”
“So if someone wants to buy and resell—no problem, that’s the market. But we have a 10-year plan in mind, and we’ll just keep our heads down and get to work,” he concluded.
Kaspi.kz is a Kazakhstani fintech company with a super app for payments, financial services, and online shopping. Since 2024, its shares have been traded on Nasdaq. Kaspi.kz’s largest shareholders are Vyacheslav Kim, chairman of the board of directors, and Mikhail Lomtadze, CEO. In 2026, Chinese IT giant Tencent became a shareholder after purchasing shares from Baring Fintech Venture Funds.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
