The West Has No Idea What’s Happening in Kazakhstan
We travelled to Astana to find out if the countries we call “emerging” are actually building faster than the ones we call “developed”.
We met with:
Arsen Tomsky, CEO & Founder of InDrive, the world’s second most downloaded ride-hailing app after Uber
Sayasat Nurbek, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Ibrahim Tashim, CEO of Baibars Venture Studio and advisor to the government
What I found out is that when you’ve had to rebuild your systems and your economy from zero, you don’t move slowly. You build fast, fail fast and start again. Just like a startup.
I always thought terms like emerging or frontier markets were reductive. Because like Kazakhstan, these places aren’t waiting to emerge. They’re already here.
And it’s what gives countries like this an advantage, not in catching up, but in redefining what “developed” even means.
So maybe this episode isn’t a just case study about ambition. Maybe it’s a blueprint for a new kind of progress, one the West might actually need to learn from.