Senate Speaker Dariga Nazarbayeva toured Astana Hub

Astana Hub’s main instruments and infrastructure were presented to the Senate Speaker and deputies. They also met with the representatives of startup projects, prototyping labs Sheberkhana and R&D centers in the confined of the Technopark, where they got familiarized with startup projects Kids security, SmartRemont, reKassa, Tourcenter and R&D centers Huawei, Tastamat, IBM, Chocofamily, Blockchain Big Data Lab, Big dream, Vardix and Idemia.

The Big dream project caught the Senate deputies attention, with the project working on implementing augmented reality technology in education. With the help of the app one can point a camera at the book to see things in reality. The team also works on rolling out the posters with augmented reality escape for children in the event of fire, plans to collaborate with the Ministry of Education and Science on that project.

The deputies also marked the Clockster project, which records working hours of employees through face recognition and fingerprint, emphasizing the need for such a solution in government bodies, schools and universities.

The Astana Hub International Technology Park of IT startups was established at the direction of the first Kazakh President as part of the fifth pillar of the Digital Kazakhstan programmes, which is the development of the innovational ecosystem. Its mission is to turn into the center where innovational projects are developed and a critical mass of young people and talented IT specialists from all over the globe are attracted.

Launched in February 2018, Astana Hub centers on starting up acceleration and incubation programmes, infrastructure formation, establishing partnerships with domestic and international organizations, imporving the legislation.

According to the Astana Hub’s press service, the startup participants have attracted over investments of 47 million tenge from funds and private investors during the previous fourth selection of an acceleration programme. The funds from the Hub’s startup projects’ sales rose to 222 million tenge, creating 149 jobs. 7 startups are due to enter the markets of other countries, including Russia, Singapore, the USA and CIS countries.

So far, Astana Hub’s startups have attracted overall investments worth over 13 billion tenge, they include Kid Security, a mobile app to protect children, the judicial assistant named Defense, the social and law project called Antidolg and GUL, an app to order flowers.