In the Kyrgyz Republic, start-ups are in style
Kyrgyz Republic · · 6 min
By Finbarr O’Reilly
When Aizhan Firsova was trying to decide a career direction, she took her grandfather’s hat and wrote 15 different professions on pieces of paper, mixed them around and pulled one scrap of paper from the hat.
“It said ‘Design’,” Aizhan said. “I was thinking about architecture, but also dreaming about philosophy and anthropology. And then my sister suggested I try fashion design.”
“We are creating interest in ethnic clothing in the Kyrgyz fashion scene today,” says Aizhan Firsova, co-founder of fashion brand Cut A Dash.
It wasn’t an obvious choice for Aizhan, 37, who describes herself as shy, but also as someone who believes clothes express something about people’s inner worlds.
Aizhan and her sister Saikal Seitalieva, 27, hail from a family of artists. Their father is a sculptor, their mother a graphic artist. Aizhan studied at the British Higher School of Art & Design in Moscow. Then, after she returned home to the Kyrgyz Republic, she and her sister produced their first fashion show in 2017 titled “Savage Timbers”. The presentation highlighted the need to protect forests and nature and featured sculptures made by their father.
The siblings then launched their own label, Cut A Dash, combining fashion and art and blending modern and ethnic Kyrgyz styles. In 2022, Cut A Dash opened its first showroom in Bishkek, the country’s bustling capital pressed against the towering Kyrgyz Ala-Too mountain range, where soaring peaks are still capped with snow during the sweltering summer months, and where traditional yurts dot the lower slopes.
When we started, there was no ethnic DNA in our work, but it is very popular now and we try to show it in our designs.
Sales for Cut A Dash tripled in 2023 before doubling again by 2024, according to Aizhan. Growth has been stable in 2025, she said, adding that she hopes to increase sales another five-fold in the coming year or two.
The sisters’ growing business venture embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of Kyrgyz youth. With more than half of the Kyrgyz Republic’s seven million people under the age of 35, the small Central Asian country’s youth is benefitting from recent economic growth, averaging nine percent annually from 2022 to 2024, according to the IMF.
Initiatives by the Ministry of Digital Development and UNDP have increased digital literacy, especially in rural areas, while international organisations such as Accelerate Prosperity (AP) and PEAK Business Innovation Centers are supporting the country’s start-up community and economy.
Sisters and fashion incubators Aizhan and Saikal participated in an AP acceleration programme to help streamline their operations and drive sales through social media.
A boom is happening
“A boom is happening and lifting us up from our nomad roots,” said Azim Abdrakhmanov, 27, an entrepreneur who launched a series of start-ups, including iHub, a co-working space. Azim also founded 4Bricks, an educational programme that replicates online the kind of learning and creative environment iHub provides offline. His goal is to create educational and business opportunities for his generation.
The Kyrgyz Republic’s geographic location provides access to markets in the Caucuses, Europe and Asia. Tugged in competing directions by global geopolitics, Kyrgyz youth often express a sense of duty to help build their country’s economy and international standing.
“We want to be free and independent and people with experience outside the country feel obligated to come back and help our motherland stand up for itself,” Azim said. “This is a country to invest in and collaborate without fear. If it wasn’t stable, I wouldn’t be here.”
Entrepreneur Azim Abdrakhmanov spent several years in corporate America before returning home to launch a series of start-ups – to “help our motherland stand up for itself”.
The country’s start-up boom is evident at Technopark, a government-supported initiative and the country’s largest creative IT space. The multistorey hub buzzes with people making calls from phone booths, holding meetings in glass pods, or working in spacious theatres equipped with plush seats and the latest digital technology. Self-serve kitchen cafés function as informal gathering places, as do video arcades and the office corners where workers play table tennis, whacking plastic balls back and forth, looking for the best angle of attack and, perhaps, that next flash of inspiration.
The government’s digital initiatives, which include tax incentives for entrepreneurs, has created an opening for fintech start-ups. They include Mancho Devs, an umbrella company that runs apps in financial technology and health care, and Smartbiz, a data company providing business intelligence analysis to clients in the banking sector, retail and pharmaceuticals.
Other start-ups aim to lighten the burden of bureaucracy. Aidar Dushenov, 27, and Suusar Abysheva, 26, are married and together run a company called AddSign. It’s the Kyrgyz Republic’s first digital document signing service, and the only one accessible in the country.
Fashion incubators such as Cut A Dash, meanwhile, are using social media to market and develop their brands, while the textile industry's development provides a foundation for growth.
“Sometimes we used to spend six hours just to sign one document. Why waste that time when it can be done digitally?” says Suusar Abysheva, 26, co-founder of AddSign, the Kyrgyz Republic’s first digital document signing service.
Accelerating start-ups
“Now I realise how great it is to be working together,” said Aizhan Firsova of partnering with her sister. “We like the same style but our characters are different. She does media and I do more with production. Our problem is running a business because we are artists.”
To manage the brand’s longer term strategy, Aizhan and Saikal participated in a six-week AP start-up bootcamp. Here the sisters learned how to standardise and streamline their operations, vary production and promote their business on social media, which has become the brand’s main point of sales.
“The local market is small and our prices are high for the middle class, but we make 10 percent of our sales at our showrooms in Dubai, Moscow and Astana,” said Aizhan.
Entrepreneur and designer Anna Tyo built her fashion brand, We Nera, with confidence, support and business solutions gained through an Accelerate Prosperity training programme.
Across town, Anna Tyo has her own fashion brand, We Nera, featuring an “intellectual casual style” imprinted with the DNA of Central Asian nomadic culture, adaptable for work or as evening wear.
Launched in 2020 after a divorce, Anna had to overcome the pandemic recession and the challenges of running a business while raising her two daughters independently. Two months on an AP programme provided the support and training she needed to find business solutions and gain confidence.
“The support and advice of other women entrepreneurs was especially useful,” Anna said. “Men have fewer family duties while women have to balance work and life and it’s hard to start a business without family support. Men have career achievements, but maternity slowed me down.”
Still, We Nera employs a team of 24 women working at her atelier, and sells her line beyond the Kyrgyz borders, with showrooms in Almaty, Berlin and Tashkent. Anna’s persistence in the face of such challenges is emblematic of the country’s young entrepreneurs.
We are dreamers. We don’t get easily discouraged.
Meet more Kyrgyz entrepreneurs
Finbarr O'Reilly is a Welsh‑born Irish‑Canadian author and photographer, and a regular contributor to The New York Times. He has documented conflict zones worldwide, won the 2019 World Press Photo Portraits prize and the 2006 World Press Photo of the Year, and co‑authored the memoir Shooting Ghosts (2017).
All images © AKDN / Finbarr O’Reilly
