inDrive is one of the world’s leading ride-hailing platforms, with Kazakhstan a key market in its global growth. Here, Country Manager Aray Bekembayev outlines how the company is expanding its Middle East footprint while strengthening its user-driven ride-hailing model in Kazakhstan.
Q: Can you introduce inDrive, its origins, global growth and parent-company overview, before we discuss its development in Kazakhstan?
Aray Bekembayev, Country Manager: The idea behind inDrive originated during a harsh winter in Yakutsk, the coldest capital in the world. Arsen Tomsky, founder of inDrive, noticed a social media group created to help people travel between Yakutsk and nearby villages. In this group, founded by Sasha Pavlov, people coordinated rides from point A to point B and negotiated prices directly.
The core purpose of inDrive emerged from this situation: to fight injustice. Around 2012, ride prices during New Year’s Eve spiked dramatically, sometimes increasing tenfold. Arsen discovered the group in a social network, saw how people were negotiating fares, and recognised a powerful insight: when a community faces a problem that no one else solves, it creates its own solution. The group grew to over 50,000 members, a significant share of Yakutsk’s population of about 330,000.
The story of inDrive is rooted in fairness and community-driven problem solving. This foundation helped inDrive grow into a global ride-hailing company. Today, we operate in 48 countries and nearly 1,000 cities. Our most recent launch was Saudi Arabia, becoming our 49th country. Globally, we rank second after Uber and fifth among the most downloaded travel apps, alongside Airbnb, Booking and Google Maps. The app has been downloaded more than 360 million times.
We achieved unicorn status in 2021. At that time, we had about 500 employees and operated in roughly 28–30 countries. Since then, we have nearly doubled our country count and grown even more in GMV and ride volume. As of early November 2025, we surpassed 7 billion deals completed in the app, and our growth continues.
Our global mission is to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people in 2030. We know this impact cannot come solely from a technical ride-hailing solution, so we are evolving toward a super-app model to expand our services.
Q: Can you describe your professional background and how it led to your role as inDrive’s country manager in Kazakhstan?
AB: I worked for nearly four years as an Ernst & Young advisory consultant before receiving my first offer to join a tech startup. That was in 2019, and the offer was from Bolt, not inDrive.
In 2020, when the pandemic began, inDrive became the only operational ride-hailing app in Kazakhstan. During the lockdown, people needed to move medicine from point A to point B, and they used inDrive to do it. Even the Minister of Healthcare publicly thanked inDrive for its cooperation, as people were using the app to send medication between cities. This demonstrated the true value of the app.
My journey with inDrive began in 2022. I started by building operations in Kazakhstan, ensuring sustainability, regulatory compliance and adapting the business model where needed. I began as a Business Development Representative and then became Business Development Manager for the CIS region, with plans to expand into EMEA.
In April 2024 I became Country Manager. Country managers now report directly to Arsen, supported by matrix managers from functions like HR. Our structure is largely decentralised.
Q: What is inDrive’s current market position in Kazakhstan, and how do you plan to compete going forward?
AB: Kazakhstan’s size played a major role in our growth. As one of the largest countries in the world, it has more than 1,500 internal routes connecting cities and small villages. One of our key early successes came from Kazakhstan: in December 2014, Astana became inDrive’s first international launch city.
Transparency is central to why the model worked. People use inDrive not only to travel from point A to point B, but also to earn income. Anyone with a car can generate additional earnings for fuel, groceries or household needs. We provide this opportunity without interfering with it, we do not adjust algorithms or set prices. Users choose their own prices, routes and terms.
Freedom of choice is one of our core principles and a key factor in successfully scaling internationally. Markets that value this freedom, for example, Pakistan, many countries in Asia and the Middle East, and leading markets like Morocco and Algeria, respond especially well to our model. We are also very popular across Latin America. The countries that most need freedom of choice appreciate inDrive the most.
Q: What key challenges is inDrive currently working to overcome in Kazakhstan?
AB: One of our biggest bottlenecks has been managing extremely high traffic. Large numbers of users join the app simultaneously, and we must ensure they receive the service they expect. Our technology is sophisticated and very different from competitors’. Instead of matching one passenger to one driver, we expose each request to multiple potential drivers, sometimes ten or more, creating a one-to-many negotiation pipeline. This model is based on game theory.
To address this, we carried out a major infrastructure overhaul. Beginning in 2023 and completing it in 2024, we migrated from a monolithic architecture to microservices. This required major investment, time and considerable effort from the entire team. That technological bottleneck has now been resolved. Our technical backlog has greatly decreased, and our focus is shifting toward service quality.
Safety is currently the top priority in Kazakhstan. We have introduced social-impact initiatives such as anti-harassment programmes to ensure people’s dignity and safety. More than nine social-impact projects are now active across about 17 countries.
Kazakhstan is one of our most mature markets among the 48 countries where we operate. Because we have been active here for 11 years and have high user retention, Kazakhstan serves as a benchmark market. We test new features here first, A/B tests, pilot programmes and post-testing. If users respond positively, we scale the feature globally.
Q: What new initiatives and features are you currently rolling out or planning to introduce in Kazakhstan?
AB: We are actively exploring the introduction of card payments. It is a complex task because we do not currently intervene in the payment process between passengers and drivers or couriers. Our platform exists for people to find each other, negotiate and finalise a deal. Once we step into the transaction flow, we must fundamentally change our approach, potentially holding funds, managing fraud risks, handling chargebacks and ensuring proper settlement to drivers.
Kazakhstan has more than 80% card-payment penetration, which is why we continue to evaluate this option. However, across our markets, card payments remain more of a luxury feature than a necessity. The essential part of our model is the direct transaction between passenger and driver. Entering that space is a new frontier for us.
Our main focus is improving P2P payments, which are widely used in Kazakhstan. People commonly transfer money from Kaspi to Kaspi by phone number. Recently, the National Bank introduced a regulation allowing the same phone number to be linked to multiple banks. This “United Banking System” enables cross-bank transfers, for example, Kaspi to Halyk or Freedom to Bank CenterCredit.
Regarding maps, we use multiple providers, Google Maps, OpenStreetMap and especially 2GIS, which is the most accurate and widely used in Kazakhstan. We take map data from 2GIS, integrate it into our system and add our own layers on top.
We are also introducing internal driver navigation. Previously, drivers had to switch between apps like Waze or Google Maps while using inDrive or Uber. In Kazakhstan, we are embedding 2GIS navigation directly into the inDrive app. Drivers can go to the pickup point and complete the route entirely within our interface, using 2GIS maps without switching apps. We measured up to 10 extra clicks under the old system, so eliminating app switching significantly improves the driver experience.
Q: How is inDrive engaging with Kazakhstan’s broader digital-transformation agenda?
AB: As country manager, I am frequently invited to Astana Hub events, startup battles, panels and judging sessions. Kazakhstan’s national agenda is increasingly centred around AI. The President emphasised the creation of a conscious, ethical AI intended for good. The boundary between beneficial and harmful AI is thin, so the focus must be on ethics.
We share our expertise wherever possible. inDrive has a dedicated AI team, and we are now working with the Ministry of Labour, providing technical and AI resources to help address challenges related to social welfare programmes. We also collaborate with the Ministry of Transport on safety: we supply anonymised datasets showing areas with high accident frequency. When accidents occur, we record them in a special system and provide that aggregated data to the Ministry to support infrastructure and safety improvements. All data is stripped of personal information, usable for analytics, not for tracking individuals.
Our broader initiative is called inVision, one of our two wings alongside inDrive. If inDrive fights injustice in mobility, inVision addresses injustice in other areas, sports, education, culture and IT, by providing fair and transparent support mechanisms. The goal is to create a ripple effect that positively changes an individual’s entire life path.
inVision is structured to support a person throughout their entire journey, from kindergarten to school, university and ultimately their career. One of the supporting pillars is the Almaty Air Initiative, which tackles air pollution and smog in Almaty using technology and startup expertise. This project is now being prepared for expansion to Pakistan, with more countries expected to join.
Q: What is your perspective on Kazakhstan’s business environment and why is now a strong moment for companies to invest in the country?
AB: Looking at Kazakhstan today as an employee of a major tech company, I can say that since 2016 things have changed dramatically.
Now the environment is completely different. Collaboration with the government is constructive, open and free of hidden interests or personal agendas. Kazakhstan is becoming increasingly friendly to tech companies.
A major milestone was the introduction of platform employment legislation, which we strongly welcomed. Many drivers and couriers had no legal framework to operate under. In 2024, the government introduced platform-employment regulation, and starting this January, after updates to the tax code, the system will be fully in force. A special status, self-employed, now applies to all platform workers. This allows platforms to act as tax agents on behalf of millions of people earning through these apps.
At inDrive alone, we have more than 500,000 workers. Platforms now pay pension and social taxes for them. Income tax is waived until 2026, after which workers will pay a modest 4%. For example, if we charge a 12% commission, 4% goes to the government for the worker’s taxes, and the remaining 8% is our revenue, effectively about half of that after costs. The government and the platform essentially earn similar margins, but the worker benefits directly: access to healthcare, pension contributions and the ability to obtain loans. Previously, without official employment records, many workers could not access financial services. This regulatory shift changes everything.
From a tech-company perspective, the progress is very positive. Kazakhstan is becoming more tech-friendly and adaptive. Government authorities are noticeably more open, they invite us to events, advocate for us and intervene when discussions stall. This level of cooperation is rare in other countries and extremely productive.
The AIFC also plays a major role by giving international investors a secure framework to hold and deploy funds into local tech companies, while ensuring strong protections for minority shareholders. We use the available instruments but avoid benefits meant to reduce the tax base, as those incentives are designed for early-stage startups, not for a unicorn like us. Still, we cooperate closely with AIFC on social projects and work actively with Astana Hub, offering expertise and running educational programmes.
We see significant progress and a rapidly improving environment for technology and innovation in Kazakhstan.
People in Kazakhstan can now see the momentum and growing opportunities in tech and are starting to study and explore them. For example, I am already a shareholder at inDrive, my options have vested, and I needed a place to hold these shares. I purchased them from the company, and a firm registered at the AIFC now manages my inDrive shares. This is a perfect example of how the country creates opportunities for citizens and employees of international companies.
It is no coincidence that Astana Hub and the AIFC are located so close to each other. The AIFC provides a secure environment for investors to hold and deploy capital, while Astana Hub hosts early-stage startups that can receive that investment. This ecosystem benefits everyone. Personally, I mentor and advise local IT startups, those without any conflict of interest, to share what I have learned as a country manager of a global tech company. I help founders understand scale, HR development and global strategy. It brings me a lot of joy, and I also contribute to our social-impact division, inVision.
