— How did you come up with the idea to launch BILLZ?
— In 2011, I joined Ucell, a major telecom operator in Uzbekistan that was part of the Swedish-Finnish group TeliaSonera at the time. I started as a marketing specialist and eventually became head of product. In the telecom business, we worked not only on mobile communications but also on digital services for corporate clients. Over that period, we launched 20–30 different projects. One of them was a customer and sales management system for small and medium-sized businesses.
To implement it in 2016, we conducted research and focus groups with B2B clients. It turned out that around 30–40 percent of participants were retail stores. We talked to them and quickly realized that our product, in its initial form, wasn’t suitable for them. It was built for small businesses in general and solved basic tasks like maintaining a customer database, logging calls and tracking sales. But retail stores have completely different needs. They must manage thousands of SKUs, handle seasonal demand fluctuations and control warehouse stock. Our system couldn’t solve these tasks.
At the same time, digitalization was badly needed. Around 80 percent of retail stores in Uzbekistan operated without digital tools. They managed accounting in notebooks, Excel or outdated software. As a result, retailers worked inefficiently, lost time and money and faced constant shrinkage and theft. It became clear that this segment had huge potential. That’s when I decided to build my own product — BILLZ, an IT system for retail automation.
— Who joined you in the team?
— Initially, Vadim Zakharyan. At Ucell, he was responsible for IT product development. In the startup, he became the CTO. Later, our third co-founder joined — Dzahongir Narzullaev. He also used to work at Ucell but left to open a chain of retail stores. We tested our ideas on his shops and received valuable insights into how retail truly operates.
— Between the three of you, you had experience in product management, IT development and retail operations. How quickly were you able to launch the product?
— We thought we could release the product in 2–3 months, but it ended up taking nearly a year. We made many mistakes early on. The biggest one was coming from a corporation and assuming a startup would be easier. In a company, every task has its own specialist and all processes are set. In a startup, you do everything yourself. Another mistake: we tried to polish the product to perfection. We wanted to build full functionality right away and meticulously refine every detail. Essentially, we were trying to create a corporate-grade solution instead of quickly building an MVP, testing demand and starting sales. On top of that, the team worked part-time back then — which significantly slowed everything down. In hindsight, we should have quit our jobs in 2017, raised investment and entered the market. Had we done that, we would have reached our current results two years earlier.
More on DigitalBusiness.kz.
— How did you come up with the idea to launch BILLZ?
— In 2011, I joined Ucell, a major telecom operator in Uzbekistan that was part of the Swedish-Finnish group TeliaSonera at the time. I started as a marketing specialist and eventually became head of product. In the telecom business, we worked not only on mobile communications but also on digital services for corporate clients. Over that period, we launched 20–30 different projects. One of them was a customer and sales management system for small and medium-sized businesses.
To implement it in 2016, we conducted research and focus groups with B2B clients. It turned out that around 30–40 percent of participants were retail stores. We talked to them and quickly realized that our product, in its initial form, wasn’t suitable for them. It was built for small businesses in general and solved basic tasks like maintaining a customer database, logging calls and tracking sales. But retail stores have completely different needs. They must manage thousands of SKUs, handle seasonal demand fluctuations and control warehouse stock. Our system couldn’t solve these tasks.
At the same time, digitalization was badly needed. Around 80 percent of retail stores in Uzbekistan operated without digital tools. They managed accounting in notebooks, Excel or outdated software. As a result, retailers worked inefficiently, lost time and money and faced constant shrinkage and theft. It became clear that this segment had huge potential. That’s when I decided to build my own product — BILLZ, an IT system for retail automation.
— Who joined you in the team?
— Initially, Vadim Zakharyan. At Ucell, he was responsible for IT product development. In the startup, he became the CTO. Later, our third co-founder joined — Dzahongir Narzullaev. He also used to work at Ucell but left to open a chain of retail stores. We tested our ideas on his shops and received valuable insights into how retail truly operates.
— Between the three of you, you had experience in product management, IT development and retail operations. How quickly were you able to launch the product?
— We thought we could release the product in 2–3 months, but it ended up taking nearly a year. We made many mistakes early on. The biggest one was coming from a corporation and assuming a startup would be easier. In a company, every task has its own specialist and all processes are set. In a startup, you do everything yourself. Another mistake: we tried to polish the product to perfection. We wanted to build full functionality right away and meticulously refine every detail. Essentially, we were trying to create a corporate-grade solution instead of quickly building an MVP, testing demand and starting sales. On top of that, the team worked part-time back then — which significantly slowed everything down. In hindsight, we should have quit our jobs in 2017, raised investment and entered the market. Had we done that, we would have reached our current results two years earlier.
More on DigitalBusiness.kz.
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