Entrepreneurial MeetUp 2023: the highlights

From January 20 to 22, AlmaU hosted Entrepreneurial MeetUp 2023 (EM 2023) - one of the events in the series of activities of the Student Entrepreneurship Ecosystem project initiated by the Eurasian Group in 2017. EM 2023 is an event where students, teachers and staff of regional educational institutions from Aktobe, Karaganda, Pavlodar, Kostanay, Taraz and Astana develop new competencies, as well as discuss interesting topics and trends, with the involvement and proactivity of each participant. The participants of the meetup were the winners of the "Kemel Kasipker" business case solving championship.

MeetUp speakers were entrepreneurs, businessmen, top managers, startup founders, executives and experts:

Svetlana Fortuna - an actress of the highest category of the highest qualification level. Leading actress of the Academic Russian Drama Theater. M. Gorky. (Astana);

Lyazzat Satiyeva - the Chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Bank.

Galym Baitimbetov - Founder of AquaPoint;

Ablai Yusupov - EdTech entrepreneur, founder of UpGrade Business;

Elnora Rozmuth - PR expert, founder of ER1 media agency;

Ulan Usenov - blogger, chemistry teacher at High Tech Academy;

Magzum Tolesh - CEO and co-founder of EasyTap online service;

Anail Bykov - CEO of Wendy's Kazakhstan & Central Asia;

Gennady Kim - Ex CEO & Shareholder of ChocoFamily ($150,000,000 GMV);

Daniyar Medetov - certified tracker, researcher and teacher at Henley Business School, Program Leader of AlmaU School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation;

Rim Abdullin - Academic Dean of the School of Public Policy and Law of Almaty Management University.

On the first day of the event, an intellectual and creative team building was held by Svetlana Fortuna, where participants performed exercises to reveal themselves, find their potential and determine common tasks for team building.

On the second day, teachers were connected to the program, who underwent a practical training on generating ideas from Valeria Baraeva, co-founder of the Rozetka educational bureau, and Yuri Plotnikov, a methodologist, game technician and designer of educational experience.

In parallel with the teachers, the students were divided into two streams to listen to trainings on the topics:

• “How to promote yourself and your product on social networks?” from Asylkhan Aisha, an expert in the field of SMM promotion and TheFlow speaker.
• “How to promote your product on Marketplace?” from Kirill Govorukhin, OZON Partner Acquisition Manager.

At the end of the day, EM 2023 participants met with Kanat Kopbaev, co-owner of Kusto Group, ranked 37th in the list of the richest businessmen in Kazakhstan in 2021 according to Forbes Kazakhstan. The meeting mainly consisted of a question and answer session, as the guys wanted to learn a lot about Kanat's life and entrepreneurial experience.

The third day began with an interesting format of Speed Dating with entrepreneurs, which allows you to talk in an informal setting with businessmen and top managers of various companies.

The participants were able to learn more about the field of work of companies, discussed business development, building marketing processes, sales, team recruitment, business scaling and financial calculations. After that, the guys were able to meet with one of the giants of the entrepreneurial world - Arsen Tomsky, a technology entrepreneur, founder of the international service inDrive. He shared his story of building a $1.23 billion "unicorn" company and answered questions from EM 2023 attendees.

At the end of the event, Gennady Kim spoke with the topic “How to go from hiring to entrepreneurs?”, where he spoke about his way out of the ChocoFamily company and the foundation of his entrepreneurial project.

Entrepreneurial MeetUp is organized as part of the Student Entrepreneurship Ecosystem project, which aims to transform classical regional educational institutions into entrepreneurial ones, develop the entrepreneurial community in the region, and develop entrepreneurial skills among students.

The Student Entrepreneurship Ecosystem project was initiated by ERG (Eurasian Group) in 2017 and is implemented by the AlmaU School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Association of Friends of Tel Aviv University in Kazakhstan.