← Fintech Leaders
Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:00]
A
I am in Almaty, Kazakhstan and there's a mountain range that towers over the city and there's one company that towers over daily life here. It's how this country pays shops, borrows money and even files its taxes. It's called Caspi. And there's one energetic man leading the operation. Caspi CEO Mihail Lamtadze.
- [00:25]
B
If you work sort of backwards, if you think the company is, let's imagine it's a box, right, which needs to produce some result. Well, in our case that box have to produce really happy consumers. That's the final result we're looking for. And then everything inside, people, resources, systems, data, it they're supposed to work in order to produce happy consumers.
- [00:47]
A
That is the entire philosophy of one of the most successful tech companies on earth. Delight your customers and build products they want.
- [00:56]
B
If consumer does like your product, you kill it. If consumer is not getting service fast enough, you speed it up. And you never think in terms of your own internal limitations.
- [01:06]
A
You've heard me talk about Caspi before. I hosted their co founder and CEO a couple years back in New York City at Nasdaq. And well, a lot has changed since we last spoke. They're expanding into Turkey. Revenue has doubled. And they just launched a new AI assisted product.
- [01:26]
B
Torkia gives us that platform because they have the manufacturing base and because they have items which they produce combined with the technology that we have now, we have items we can sell and we have a technology to help us to sell those items.
- [01:39]
A
It's hard to explain just how dominant and loved Caspi's super app is in this market. We have 20 million people in the country and over 15 million of them are, are using Caspi on a daily basis. And the app handles about two thirds of the country's e commerce.
- [01:58]
B
I mean if you think about what company is producing like in terms of final outcome, it's everything from food, clothing, electronics, to actually paying in the store savings account, you know, your digital documents, you can get married, you know.
- [02:11]
A
So you know, Caspi is one of the most admired and impressive tech companies in the world. And today we're going to find out how exactly are they doing it. Let's go. Mikhail, thank you for the invitation to Kazakhstan.
- [02:27]
B
Yeah, thank you for coming over. It's great to have you here.
- [02:30]
A
I want to show you something before we get started. So we recorded an episode two years ago, right. And you said this, you'll have a
- [02:40]
B
lot of listeners in Kazakhstan now.
- [02:42]
A
Great, then I will visit and next time we'll record in Kazakhstan.
- [02:46]
B
You are invited and you can actually see our services. I think you'll be shocked.
- [02:51]
A
That's on the record.
- [02:52]
B
Agreed.
- [02:53]
A
So you're a man of your word. I can tell you're a man of your word. And since I'm visiting all the way from New York, I have a gift for you. Oh, thank you. This is one of the few distilleries from New York City actually around the corner from my place.
- [03:11]
B
Excellent. Thank you.
- [03:12]
A
I hope you enjoy.
- [03:12]
B
I'll have some great Georgian toast with it.
- [03:14]
A
All right. All right. We can put it back. Don't forget it afterwards.
- [03:19]
B
Thank you.
- [03:20]
A
Thanks for the invitation, especially on this big week for Caspi. And we're definitely going to talk about Casper, which is the great new product that you just launched about 12 hours ago.
- [03:36]
B
Correct.
- [03:37]
A
So let's start talking about AI because that's what Casper is all about. Specifically, I want to talk about your product development process. How has it changed? Because last time we spoke you mentioned to me that you take about three to six months to develop a product before launching. You write a three page memo that anyone outside of CASP with no technical knowledge could understand. What is the same? What has changed in an era where software is much easier and faster to build?
- [04:13]
B
Actually the developing Casper also took around nine months. You know, every sort of big product when we launch and the big, I mean like our E commerce travel developing super app, like really big products that usually takes around nine months. It's just a interesting fact. You know, the way that we're coming up with the, with the new products in terms of the, in terms of the new direction and the AI and what has been changing. I mean we have been using AI as a technology internally. But I think the future especially for us is whoever can crack and develop the consumer facing functionality when you think internally and we can spend time, but it's always about the productivity and you can do more with less people or with the same people, more productivity. In case of the consumer facing interfaces, I think this is where the huge potential is. And there are a lot of different experiments various companies are doing. We have decided that, you know, we have developed the business which is the everyday super app. So you know, our consumers are making 80 transactions a month with us. So we have all this range of services. You can buy anything, you can pay for anything, you can book your travel, government services, groceries. So we have this huge range of the services in a single mobile application. So the kind of target we're setting up for ourselves is can we become the everyday AI assistant from everyday super app and that's what we think is our final destination. Now we are just developing this first step when we have taken the specific use case where we can deliver the most value, but also build the trust with the consumers and develop the shopping experience with Casper, our AI assistant, but then we will scale him into other everyday tasks.
- [06:02]
A
About a month or two ago I sat down with Max Levchin, of course, legendary PayPal co founder and a firm CEO and founder, and we talked about this topic and he was saying, hey, software has never been the bottleneck or the challenge. The challenge goes way beyond that, especially for a marketplace driven product. Sounds like you agree, right? It's more about developing that trust with the customers and solving their problems. The software development has never been the most challenging part.
- [06:42]
B
I mean, we are extremely lean company already. So, you know, nobody can expect from Caspi to make these fancy announcements that suddenly like we're laying off 10% of our workforce because we are already lean today. So that's not something which is our priority or is our focus. We're extremely efficient company with very flat organizational structure. The people that work in the company, those are incredibly talented, dedicated professionals. So there is not much that we can optimize. Of course we can speed up, we can increase the productivity with the same number of people and we're doing this. But I think that when you think like in five, 10 years, I mean, the most important is not just how efficiently you are organized as a company. We will organize, we are already efficient, we'll become more efficient. The question is really who build the trust with the consumers so that the consumer facing applications, they deliver the value and simplify actions or help to make better decisions to the consumers. And consumers will trust those assistants. So if you think about Casper or whoever is developing the AI consumer facing capabilities, it's almost like a human, you know, so it's easy to hire, it's easy to fire. So consumers will fire. This is how we internally discuss. So if our Casper, our AI assistant will not deliver on the promise and the quality of the advice will not be high, consumers will fire him very quickly. Very quickly. Yes, it's easy. You know, you just go back to the traditional way of, you know, searching or buying your items on our marketplace. So this is why we believe that's, that is the most challenging capability. We also believe this is where we have the most competitive advantage and in general competency to build in terms of both, of course, our people and talent, but also the data that we have, the compute capabilities that we have being on A smaller market is also an advantage. Rolling out this capability on the 20 million people market testing and then making it work much easier than if you have hundreds of millions consumers and you run, you can, you will not move even a needle, but you will spend a lot on that base of the consumers. In our case, I think we just have really a very good case and a strong chance to build, you know, maybe the first consumer facing everyday AI assistant.
- [09:11]
A
Let's talk about that. How does the super app model evolve and change in this new era? Because you're betting on maybe not a completely new interface, but at least a supplemental interface that maybe leads to it changing completely from how people interacted with Caspian a few years ago, a few months ago.
- [09:32]
B
Let's think in terms of human interaction with application, right?
- [09:36]
A
Yeah.
- [09:36]
B
Just to simplify. So at the moment the way that we interact with the mobile application is that we look at the screen, we read something, we process this information and then we make an action with the screen. So we either push the button or we scroll read again, two direction with the phone, read again. So that's the interaction. What we also know that more interaction is with the screen or more buttons you actually push. The final outcome in terms of consumer conversion into the final product you are trying to sell is reducing. So again more actions, more scrolling, more reading is reducing the conversion rates. So when you think about the assistant actually assistant and the AI technology is enabling us to skip that interaction with the screen and it just goes only one way. So it dramatically reduces number of actions you have to do with the screen. So maybe the screen will not be important in the future, but we're not in a devices business. But actually what will happen is that our assistant dramatically reduces number of actions you have to do to reach the outcome and that's what will increase the conversion rate. This sounds maybe sort of simple, but it's really complicated to make sure that actually what you see on the screen is exactly what you need. And that's where our competitive advantage in terms of the data comes in and our ability to make sure that our prediction is highly accurate. So our capability is actually to predict the outcome. So that's what AI is trying to do. Because our quality of data is really good because consumer is already in a mobile application which has all the services inside. There is always payment infrastructure. There is already. We just need to personalize what we call it like extreme personalization. We need to personalize it to the extent that when you ask your assistant to do something, he understands what you want, he knows you and then he starts offering you the outcomes, solutions, decisions, the products or any other service that we have with very high accuracy. And that's what is our strategy in the past.
- [11:45]
A
Not long ago, I think last year you publicly commented that while we have a lot of innovation happening on AI at the same time you see clear signs of bubble like behaviors from some companies. Has your thinking changed a little bit on this?
- [12:04]
B
Yeah, well, I think I would, I wouldn't be the only one. I wouldn't be the only one. I think, I think where is the hype? Yeah, you know, there is always overinvestment. So this is not, I mean I'm not going to win the Nobel Prize with the statement, I mean everybody is. It's definitely over investment. It's hype means that you know, people are betting on different companies now. It's sort of the, how should I say, the game of numbers. You know, I bet on 100 companies and I hope, you know at least one out of 10 or 20 will be successful. So definitely hype, definitely over investment and being highly confident that most of the companies will be because it's a hype, will be unsuccessful, will go bust. But there is no doubt from our side that the technology itself is really remarkable because the technology, I think we don't even know how things will develop in the five or 10 years. But we truly believe that this technology will change the way with we interact with the devices. I mean we are consumer company, that's why consumer facing products, extremely important for us. That's why we talk less about the operational, more about what end consumer will use like our merchant or our consumer side of our services. So what we believe is that the whole interaction and the whole, the way that the consumers receive information, the way they make decisions will change. And because you don't need to interact that much with the devices, will also bring some new wave of the devices which are AI powered for consumers in five or 10 years. Now we keep it simple. We want to develop the AI assistant which takes so much less effort from you to get to the solution to the product which you need and the product which actually fits you the best. It's almost like you go to the store. Basically we treat our assistant as a human. So he's a consultant in a certain thing. So now he's a consultant in terms of your experience. Like in the store. You go to the store and you suddenly ask the person, he gives you simple explanations and he basically tries to help you to make the right purchase for you and you don't need to click any buttons. Hopefully over time even less. It's purely conversational. So that's what our belief is. And then in the future, it might be a consultant in planning your vacation or your financial consultant or maybe even your designer because you don't want to buy a sofa. You know, you want to, you want to, you just bought an apartment and you suddenly want to develop the design. So with this technology, we already see the opportunity of developing these different roles which are highly specialized. Again, just to take a step back, we're not developing this general assistant. You know, we're not going, we're extremely focused company. We want to make sure that the first step we make, it's highly accurate, high quality, and we build the trust. And then step by step, we'll be introducing the new roles for Casper. Now, his role is extremely specific. He needs to help you to find the right product for you in our E commerce platform.
- [15:04]
A
And actually, if I think about our past conversation, you're very consistent because I remember you were telling me the number one task for you is about making your consumers, your clients lives easier. So this is just one more step in that direction. Let's talk about that. Right? Because something that's very interesting, I guess to the followers of the company is that most of the team members within CASPI do not have financial targets. Right? They have customer satisfaction targets, net promoter score. Maybe tell us a bit more about this because it's an interesting concept. And then who is responsible for the financial targets? Is it just you or a couple other members?
- [15:51]
B
Well, we have, I mean, it's our company and we are constantly sort of improving. So you can achieve this type of constant search for innovation and improvement. If you always think in terms of the consumer and you don't think in terms of your company. If consumer doesn't like your product, you kill it. If consumer is not getting service fast enough, you speed it up and you never think in terms of your own internal limitations. So that's why like even this, you know, our AI assistant we're developing, right? I mean, in most of other companies, people will say what's going to happen with our advertising revenue, right. If they think in terms of the targets, they will say the question, number one, why Google miss the whole, you know, they're catching up now. I think they're developing really good tools, but they miss, they miss the, the initial spike, right.
- [16:40]
A
Most companies are afraid to cannibalize their existing financial performance.
- [16:45]
B
And we basically said that if we believe this product is incredibly useful, we would use it ourselves, we really have to double down and just continue developing it. And we need to disrupt ourselves from within. And that's basically how we operate this type of values in the company to be developed. I think it just takes really more than just the financial. Of course we're not stupid. I mean we track the financial statement, financial metrics, but having the consumer guiding us, what to do, that's much more powerful. And this is why most of the units in the company, we care about the consumers and the net promoter score or number of calls you make, the speed of our response, those are the metrics which are helping to define whether consumer is happy or not. And that's our biggest asset. And that's why it's also the biggest and the most important metric for all of us. Now, financial side of things, of course we have, I mean I'm looking at financials as well. It's never a headline discussion, but then, you know, maybe top 15, 20 guys are involved and we, you know, we understand what our financial results would be and of course we take them responsibly. We don't want to overspend, want to make sure we price products appropriately and so on and so forth. So that's definitely part of our strategy building. But that's not something which guides our decision making. Our decision making is guided by, you know, what's the next product we can do, how we can make customers happier, how we can increase, you know, by developing high quality products, we can have more interactions with our consumers that those are the metrics which are extremely important and they make us profitable. But again, happy consumers interacting with us more frequently and staying with us. This is how we continue growing financially.
- [18:31]
A
Something that came up in one of my conversations yesterday at the launch event of Casper is that you're also focused on the return on time. How do you think about this concept?
- [18:43]
B
Life is short, right? So you just want to make sure that time you spend, you spend on the important things which bring the most value. It does mean that most of us work really hard and we continue working and being excited about things we do. So it's not about working less, but actually how you can continue working hard, but you, you concentrate on the things which bring the most value. And sometimes things like Casper or where we're launching the payments business or super app, every major service we're launching, sometimes we just start allocating disproportionate amount of time to those new initiatives. Now the way that companies organize, we're allowed to do it, me and other guys, because let's say two centers of gravitational. So number one is where the innovations happen, right? So that's you know, products led by the product development team. But it's like where the innovation is and then the operations and the operations is where actually we are serving our existing customers with existing products. And our operations team is extremely strong. They care about the consumer. Consumer metrics are the most important metrics for them. And you know, you are making consumer happy only if repetitive interactions of consumer with you provide desired outcome at a very high quality. And you can lose your consumers if suddenly every repetitive interaction with you becomes, you know, bad quality. Consumer is not happy. This everyday mobile application, you know, 80 transactions a month in a supermarket business which now is probably the biggest grocery business in the country. Consumers are buying every week. If you screw up the purchase in one of the weeks, it's really tough to bring them back. It's like a never ending perfection engine. So operational guys delivering so much value with our existing products allow us on the other, you know, being a little bit sort of, you know, crazy and experimentive with innovative ideas. Like you know, Casper we have launched. I mean we're lucky that most of the stuff we launch are extremely successful. So when I say like experimenting, I don't mean like wasting money, you know, whenever. We never wasted money and resources and our time is precious. But yeah, so that the operations running like a Swiss watch allows our product teams and, and the guys to run the innovative side of things.
- [21:05]
A
But I think you're mentioning that most of the products you've launched have been extremely successful. That's no coincidence. Right? Your process to prepare for that launch is pretty thorough.
- [21:17]
B
Correct.
- [21:18]
A
So you come out already ensuring some level of product market fit.
- [21:24]
B
Yeah, I mean we can take example of the caster for example. So when we're thinking about where we can launch this technology because it has very broad application, you know, like inclination of every smart person is to develop, to solve everything. So we could actually develop the. We could launch the shopping assistant like you know, many other companies have done and we could have done. We'll help you with the search, we'll help you with the selection, we'll help you with the selecting of the items, selecting of the seller, selecting of the shipping method. So and you can actually go through and it's possible. I mean I'm not saying this is not possible to you know, through the whole shopping experience you can help consumer, consumer always asking a question, what to buy from, who to buy, how to deliver, how to pay. So you can actually respond to Every question during the shopping journey. And we could do it. Technology is there and the data capabilities and the models are trained. But actually what we said is what is absolute minimum we can launch. And when we say absolute minimum, that means absolute minimum. That will create magic for the consumers. That consumers will get immediate value. But at the same time, we can have this small step, but highly accurate to build the trust. And we know that in this will be, you know, whatever. I'm not going to use 100%, but let's say 99.9% confident that we can deliver value on that specific narrow piece. And this is where we started. So we basically Casper now is consulting and helping consumer until the moment that you go to the shopping cart. So he will compare the items, he will give you the reviews, he will summarize the description, give you differences, explain in simple language, technical terms. And then eventually as you push the shopping cart, then traditional e commerce experience starts. We deliberately took such a simple step because we can expand in three months. We can add another step. Now shipping method, we can help you to select. We have range of shipping methods, payment method you can select, salary you can select. And by adding and making this product, I wouldn't call complicated, I would call more comprehensive. We dramatically increasing with this approach from extreme simplification to adding the services, we're dramatically increasing the chance of our success. But also, you know, consumers learn together with it, we learn together with it. You know, with development and step by step, our teams become more experienced. So we, every single product you take, we always launched, every successful product always will launch. From extreme simplification to adding the features over the course of consumers using it. And you never know, maybe in three months consumers will tell us something different, right? And maybe they will want something different from us. So it's better to start simple and then listen to your consumers what they want.
- [24:17]
A
Since we're talking a little bit about organizational structure, Jensen Huang famously has about 60 direct reports from Nvidia. Do you structure yourself similarly?
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, I don't think in terms of organizational structure. I mean, of course you need to have a structure, you need to have job descriptions and things like that. But I always think in terms of the tasks need to be performed and the meetings we need to have to deliver the final results. So I don't think in terms of direct reports. Basically I just interact with anyone that is important to complete the task, that is important to reach the target. And if from that perspective, maybe, I don't know, the better measurement would be number of People I interact during the month, not the direct reports.
- [25:00]
A
Where do you think that number is?
- [25:01]
B
It actually would be probably up to 100 people.
- [25:05]
A
And these are meaningful interactions.
- [25:07]
B
Those are the meetings about. This is the product development we have, this is the business results we have achieved with the guys that run the businesses. This is the, the product we want to launch. I would say two thirds of the meetings around the products.
- [25:22]
A
Okay.
- [25:23]
B
And one third of the meetings is around. Okay, great. This is the business performance that we have. And now it's also split between two countries, you know, Kazakhstan and Turkey. So yeah, so if we take this, there are a lot of new people coming in into these discussions, then I would say probably about 10, 20% of the people would be new every month.
- [25:45]
A
Yeah, that's interesting.
- [25:47]
B
And some interactions really need. Like when you have operational discussions, for example, you don't need to meet people every month. You don't really. I mean you are creating meetings for the sake of the meeting switch. So you would meet them once in two months or once in a quarter. But my focus is primarily in the direction of where the products are going and how we are going to improve the. Or what's our next product, or what's our next feature on the product, things like that.
- [26:25]
A
So without a doubt the most interesting event or the most interesting headline of Caspi within the last two years is your international expansion. So let's talk a bit about that. You expanded to Turkey. How's it going? How has the first year with Hepsi Burada gone? What have you learned?
- [26:50]
B
No, I mean it's really exciting. We have said that we have this inspiration of having 300 million user business and at the moment we have about probably 25 if we combine now Turkey and Kazakhstan. So in our case we believe that all the ingredients are there. I mean, you know, Turkey is a big market, you know, around 90 million people. We have the company and the brand which is respected and strong. We have, I mean 18 million users coming to the mobile application monthly, converting into roughly 3, 3.5 million actual buyers on the E commerce platform. And our focus really has been mostly just to prepare ourselves and the company towards adding more services in the future. The reason why we call it prepare is because if you want to, of course our intention is to do what we have done with our Caspi sort of super app strategy. However, to implement that strategy, it's fundamentally important and cannot be compromised that your existing customers have to be like super happy. I'm not saying like on average happy. I'm not saying like Happy like any other competitor, I mean just thrilled, you know, happy like net promoter score of, you know, 80, I mean those 90, those are because most of the companies have 40, 50 and that's already a very good number. The reason why this is fundamentally important is because if you want to innovate at the speed like we do, you basically need to have this incredibly excited and happy customers with your existing products because you launched the next product and they will use your product only if they are happy with your existing products and the happier they are more than they will use your next product. And the reason why it's important because that's the only way you can build the business, grow the business, but actually make it profitable. If your customers are average happy, you give them product, some of them use, some of them churn you investing into marketing, you're investing into bringing them back. So it's actually cost you much more money. So it's much better to take step back sometimes and say we have customers which are happy, but we want to make customers which are, I mean 90% NPS customers which are just so happy that they are actually asking you to develop the services from them. Nobody could imagine Caspi being primarily in financial products. That would be where we are now. There is no other company, I mean there are very few companies that have the same range of the services. And the main reason why we've achieved it is because we always paranoically are focused on the customer quality and the happiness and the same we want to to build in our other markets. And Turkey is our priority. So we are working on the things which are related. Like we want to increase the speed of delivery, we want to increase the user experience so that the mobile application particularly is our focus, is easier to navigate. We're improving search, we're improving the personalization, we're organizing the data so it's readily available. So we're doing a lot of background work and we already see results. I mean companies growing roughly around, you know, depending on the month, around 20 to 25% order growth. Now if you actually look into some public companies on a retail side, you know, we are one of the fastest growing retail companies in Turkey and things like that, but we haven't even started yet. We're working with existing customers, want to make them as happy as humanly possible and then we'll start innovating. We have been just approved for the bank license for the bank acquisition which will enable us actually to launch the financial product. So really excited and our team is extremely excited and you Know, we believe that we have enough, you know, we have, we have enough time in, in, in 25 hours we work to, to build another market for Caspi.
- [30:48]
A
So what are the differences between Kazakhstan and Turkey so far?
- [30:55]
B
Turkey has an extremely powerful small and medium enterprise and manufacturing foundation. So pretty much most of the items which are sold in Habse Burota are actually produced in Turkey. That's the biggest difference from, you know, Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan, this manufacturing base grows, but you know, still vast majority of the consumer products like in our e grocery already 2 3rd is locally sourced. So that's for example. But when you think about some other consumer products, especially like things like clothing, electronics and so on, they are brought from outside. So they are, they're imported from other markets. Like Turkey is one of the biggest in terms of clothing, textile, home items and so on. So that's the biggest difference. And when we look at the merchants there, they're really extremely experienced. They are producing the items which actually they're selling and developing the. And when we started to work on the merchant side, we realized that actually some of the products and services in Turkey are highly applicable to Kazakhstan and some of the services we develop in Kazakhstan are highly applicable in Turkey. So we've moved like one level up and we said now we're developing the global product. So when you think about our suite of the suit of the products, you know, as we develop them, we have global advertising product, you know, we have global marketing, global risk management data capabilities. And this is combination of both capabilities both from from Turkey and from, from Kazakhstan. So really, really excited because it almost feels that one plus one will be three for us.
- [32:35]
A
And if you, you think about your very public, very specific 100 million user goal.
- [32:44]
B
Yeah.
- [32:45]
A
Is Turkey enough? Sounds like you would probably need an additional market to get.
- [32:51]
B
Well, Turkey gives us that platform because they have the manufacturing base and because they have items which they produce combined with the technology that we have now, we have items we can sell and we have a technology to help us to sell those items. And then if you think, you know, countries around the Turkey, you know, basically those are natural markets for us to consider in the future to expand again. It's from Kazakhstan what we can bring. We can bring technology from Turkey products. And there are two manufacturing centers in this part of the world is China and Turkey. So Turkey has its own space, of course, it's very close to Europe and logistically, you know, affordable both from the quality and the speed. So that market just gives us an opportunity to start looking outside. But Again, for us, we are extremely focused company. We are focused on our, in a Turkey, on our home market. And we want just to transform really happy customers into triple happy customers and merchants and then we can expand outside of Turkey in the future.
- [33:55]
A
And Turkish consumers with Kazakh consumers, pretty
- [33:57]
B
similar, well, similar, you know, that the language, they have similar origin. So extremely sort of related nations. You know, Turkey is one of the biggest travel destinations from Kazakhstan, both for vacation and otherwise share roots of the same language. Actually probably, you know, I would say they understand each other when they talk. So 30 to 40% of the language is very similar.
- [34:22]
A
I can hear it.
- [34:23]
B
So there is, there are a lot of similarities. The biggest, I think the biggest difference would be that the access to the online services, I think the penetration in Kazakhstan is much higher just because of the way that it has been a smaller market. And I think that's something which we can bring, we can bring extremely sort of high quality digital mobile services, hopefully can help with increasing the share of sort of cashless economy and things like that. But when you think in terms of the consumer, I would say extremely similar.
- [34:56]
A
So talking about happy customers, one thing that was interesting to me to learn this week is, you know, here instead of Uber, there's Yandex Go, I think is the name. And something I heard is sometimes when Yandex goes down, your customers are asking you to launch this product or they're asking you to launch food delivery. Is this something that you've considered?
- [35:20]
B
Yes, we have Gaspee Taxi would be a nice name to have in our portfolio. So, but at the same time, we're also thinking in terms of, I mean, is there anything that we can add the value, you know, like, can we do something differently that will create just disproportionate excitement in terms of the, in terms of the consumers and food delivery and taxi, they're interesting markets, interesting businesses, but they're also a lot of players in that market and they do things, you know, very similarly. And we just feel like, you know, I mean, if we would be on the bigger market, you know, we would think like we wouldn't do a taxi, we would do straight into driverless taxi. You know, that that's the jump we would consider. But, but like going into the market where they're, you know, decent quality consumer experience, okay, they have sometimes, as you say, you know, not working properly. But every tech company has here and there, some, you know, rare issues, hopefully, but still. So, yeah, at this stage I think we would be thinking more about what other services can be part of our AI assistant, Casper. And that would be our priority and wouldn't be thinking about other sort of going to other verticals by ourselves. At our most important priority now is front end of the consumer experience with the AI. And if we crack this, I think, or when we crack this, I think that will deliver the huge value and scalability. Maybe our AI assistant then will go and ask taxi companies to join and help to book the taxi. So whoever wins the front end of consumer experience with AI will be the one who creates the most value for consumer and for the company itself.
- [37:04]
A
And it's interesting to me also, just walking around. I've been here a few days, trying to live like a local, and I even went to a gym, which helped me realize that you also have a huge retail base, right? A merchant base that love your product because you're enabling them to capture more customers. Just as an anecdote, I went to a gym, I think a company's called Invictus Fitness. And the CEO found out why I was here and he volunteer without me even asking that he loves your product because it's opening more doors in terms of new clients. Is this feedback that you receive often
- [37:53]
B
it's like, you know, when. When the customers are saying, you know, thank you, it's. It's like a honey on our heart. I don't know how to say, you know, it's like really, you know, something which inspires us to continue, you know, innovating and doing the great things. You know, if we would be in the restaurant, for example, or they would understand that there is, you know, somebody from Cosby, people usually come over and tell you thank you. So I think that's the biggest reward we get in terms of the business side of things. You know, we have two core stakeholders in our ecosystem. We have consumers and we have merchants in our business. And, you know, one of the layers of our business, I would say, is we actually connect them too. So we have consumers which are interacting with our services, and we have the merchants which are providing the services to the consumers. You know, we are a tech company, right? We don't, apart from our grocery business, we don't actually own the services which consumers are using. And apart from financial services, where we provide our. Our own money or savings accounts, so we connect them and our goal is really to make sure this connection is happening as seamlessly as possible. And, you know, our merchants are the ones which need to develop their business. And by developing their business, that means they also deliver more services to our consumers. And again, this Connection just helps us if they both grow, you know, this is how our company grows. So the both are equally important for us. And we have, you know, separate product suites for the, for the consumer products and for the merchant products. And again, our goal in the merchants, like, you know, there was, we had a huge argument the other day in our office with the guys at the team and you know, you know, what was the fight about? The fight was about how we can, you know, how we can continue developing our services, but the fees which merchants are paying to us is less, you know, so fine, it was not about, it was the opposite direction, you know, so we were like pretty much screaming, screaming to each other like, okay, how we can do it better, how we can do it more efficiently from our, from our side, how we can drive the costs of the, of the merchants, the fees they're paying also down so that they can continue growing and become more profitable. So the conversation we had is how we can make the merchants working with us more profitable. I don't know how many e commerce marketplaces, you know, you have, like guys are fighting about how we can make our merchants more profitable rather than how we can make ourselves more profitable.
- [40:19]
A
Right? It's usually the opposite.
- [40:21]
B
It's usually it's opposite. It's constantly increasing the fees and you know, increasing the prices is some of the most painful decisions that if, if we have to take. Those are really painful.
- [40:32]
A
Let's talk a bit about your investor base because just a few months ago there was this big announcement and it's related to something you mentioned to me couple years ago. And it was, we talk about the companies that you most admire. A few companies came up, but number one, you mentioned WeChat. The company behind WeChat is Tencent. Tencent just became an important shareholder in Caspi, obviously very strategic. Tell us a bit about this step and also what are you hoping to learn from Tencent?
- [41:07]
B
I mean Tencent is, you know, as far as I'm concerned, is a pioneer of the super app business model. So they have been the first ones and the biggest ones in the truly super, which means a single mobile application with a lot of services integrated into it. So that's, you know, example which we, we followed and learned from in general, we're paranoiacally learners. That's another thing which I think helps us to keep going. And then, and so it's a great testament, I think to our business model that they have decided to invest, you know, from their side. This is the group which is doing investments in many other Companies as well. So we just hope that, you know, we'll be able to, you know, just learn really more and you know, apart from interacting with the tencent as one of the key investors, but also maybe work around and learn about some of the specific business lines they have on their side. Because definitely there are things we can learn which I still believe that I think we'll launch our, you know, Casper AI assisted more successfully than they will do. So maybe there is something they can learn from us. But it's a great company and we would love to interact with them, you know, closely and learn from their experiences as well.
- [42:19]
A
Another thing I wanted to ask you about. Your revenue has nearly doubled in the last couple of years. The stock price has not. What do you think the market misunderstands? What do you think the market is not seeing about? Gasp.
- [42:33]
B
It's reflection of the fact that nobody expected the company like this to be born from Kazakhstan and then nobody would realize that the company like this and the size can be built in 20 million people market. So those were the challenges which were reflected in our stock price as a single market company. And from our perspective, I'm not, you know, I think the stock is the stock which has different limitations or factors that influence it. We're focused on operations. So we believe that if we execute, if we continue executing like we've historically done, if we're successful and when we are successful with our consumer facing AI capabilities, we will start sharing a bit more how it works also on the internal services inside the company. And we are successful in, you know, showing and replicating this business model in a Turkey. The stock will follow. I think we will continue explaining our business, but what we need to be focused on is the performance just showing, you know, that we can bring this business model to another bigger market and then, you know, I think there will be people that will believe that's possible.
- [43:47]
A
It looks to me like investors are not giving you credit for the Turkey market yet.
- [43:55]
B
Correct. That's what I think too.
- [43:57]
A
Yeah.
- [43:57]
B
Obviously they're underestimating our capabilities to execute,
- [44:02]
A
but you're used to that.
- [44:03]
B
I've been running this company for 20 years with no external funding. So of course I've used people. You know, investors don't realize this company went where it is now. It never had external impact investment into the company, so grew organically. And because it grew organically, this is why we always take it step by step. We're always planning. We want to be this company, be a hundred million user company, multiple markets and we have 10 years, five years, this is the horizons we're talking about. So whoever wants to buy and flip and whatever, you know, that's fine, that's the market. But we have 10 year planned in our heads and we just will put our heads down and just execute.
- [44:45]
A
So if you think of the big tech leaders or actually not just tech leaders, just people leaders in general, who is one you deeply admire and why?
- [44:56]
B
Well, I mean in general I work on a specific cases, you know what I mean? It's like I have a very realistic view. So I don't idealize anyone apart from my parents. And so from that perspective I would say there are specific things which I, I like to read about and learn. Like Steve Jobs would be obviously the one just because of the simplification and care about the consumers and the way the structure was built. Actually some of the things about like directly responsible individual and directly responsible teams is actually an idea which we learned on Apple example. And then another extreme would be Elon Musk who would, you know, we'll be flying people to Mars and building data centers in space and how you can actually, you know, talk about certain things which extremely difficult to imagine today. That would be another example of someone who is extremely interesting to follow. And then of course they're all usual, you know, not the usual, but a lot of interesting people in between those two extremes. But we also, you know, basically following means learning something specific, you know, like what, what the companies are doing differently, how they're producing the product, you know, how they're positioning their brands and things like that. So we're always are focused on learning something, you know, specific about each company. But those two would be an extreme example. Extreme simplification, consumer care and flying to Mars. So the two examples which I find very interesting.
- [46:29]
A
Yeah. And your answer reminds me of what you told me about reading books two years ago. And you're like, you're very specific. You have a task and then you find the both books for that task. Right. So with your, I guess the people you admire, you take a similar approach, right. You, you admire maybe someone for one specific thing they did and you learn about it, Correct? Yeah. I wanted to ask you maybe a last, a bit of a personal question. With all the success that you've had and the, the growth and the size of Caspi that has followed with tremendous financial returns. Right. How is your approach to money and wealth? Because it seems to me that that's not what drives you because you seem pretty focused.
- [47:18]
B
I have no approach, just. I've just focused on the, you know, I think I would be, you know, the very happy person if I would be sitting in the office interacting with our team and drawing the products and traveling less. But of course, I have to, you know, probably about, you know, David Ferguson, my colleague, is helping with investor relations, but I still have to interact with investors. But, you know, I would be much more happier if I work with my team and think about how to make consumers happy and don't spend my time on anything else. Really.
- [47:52]
A
Mihail, thank you for welcoming me to this wonderful, wonderful thank you for coming over.
- [47:59]
B
It's really great to have you here.
- [48:01]
A
Yeah, thank you. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoyed this great episode in Kazakhstan with Mihail Lamtadze from Caspi. If you want more interviews, make sure to subscribe, follow and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your shows. It helps and means a lot. And if you have any suggestions or thoughts about the show, just drop me a line on LinkedIn. See you next time.