Uzbekistani fintech start-up Uzum may tap eurobond market before year end

Uzum, Uzbekistan’s most valuable fintech start-up, is considering its first eurobond sale before the end of the year, said Nikolay Seleznev, cofounder and chief strategy officer, in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We are scaling our unsecured lending business and, as a result, we need a lot of funding,” Seleznev said. “We are in a very good situation: we need a lot of money to make money.”

Uzum is Uzbekistan’s first tech unicorn. Its latest funding round in March valued the start-up at $2.3 billion. Another round is planned for this year. Uzum is also considering an IPO.

Uzum has so far funded its growth through private investment from backers like China’s Tencent and Oman’s sovereign wealth funds. Local bonds account for about 20% of the company’s funding, Seleznev said previously. Uzum is now the largest private issuer in Uzbekistan’s domestic corporate bond market. Since 2025, the company has sold UZS2.1 trillion ($178 million) of local bonds. This month, Uzum increased a financing from the Eurasian Development Bank to $100 million from $70 million under a loan agreement signed in May.

“Eurobonds will definitely be on our radar when the timing is right, possibly later this year or early next year,” Seleznev said.

Central Asian debt has drawn strong investor demand in recent years, Bloomberg notes. Uzbekistani companies are increasingly attracting large order books, though Kazakhstan remains the region’s most active eurobond issuer.