MOST Ventures is building the market its founders need

Consider an investment company whose story begins with a bus stop. Before leading MOST Ventures, Alim Khamitov worked on projects in telemedicine, transport, and commerce, including Smart Bus Stops. Then he attended an accelerator in America. The question he brought home was less about his next product than about the place where products were supposed to grow: why did Central Asia have talented people, yet so little comparable support around them?

Khamitov describes leaving his earlier businesses to concentrate on MOST. This is a useful origin because it changes the unit of ambition. A smart bus stop is a product. An incubator can help many people build products. A venture fund can finance some of them. MOST’s history is the gradual assembly of those neighbouring activities, each addressing a different point at which a founder might get stuck.

The cheque arrived years after the club

The wider organisation traces its roots to an entrepreneurs’ club in Almaty in 2011. MOST Ventures’ company profile lists 2012 as its founding year. Its first venture fund came much later: a launch in December 2020, reported the following January, with an announced $10 million size. These dates describe different beginnings. Putting them together reveals how much groundwork preceded the investment vehicle.

The early proposition already combined acceleration with investment in technology companies targeting global markets. MOST was registered at the Astana International Financial Centre. Rather than assuming a steady supply of polished, fundable startups, the organisation worked on preparing that supply. In a developing venture market, the investor’s pipeline may need an educational department before it needs another spreadsheet.

Preparation is part of the product

What can a founder actually do with MOST? Seek investment, certainly, but also approach the related Investment Readiness Accelerator, or IRA. MOST Business Intelligence runs the preparation programmes; MOST Ventures says it invests in selected successful graduates. That distinction matters. Joining a programme gives a founder a route toward investor readiness, rather than an automatic entitlement to a cheque.

The work includes mentoring, pitching, and examining a business model. Khamitov has described advisory boards, regular exchanges, and chats where founders discuss problems as well as achievements. It sounds mundane beside the customary glamour of venture capital. Yet a founder facing an awkward customer conversation may find an experienced person answering a message more useful than another congratulatory stage appearance.

There is preparation on the other side of the table, too. The wider MOST ecosystem runs an investors’ club and has worked with EBRD and Dealroom.co on Venture Start. A startup needs someone capable of evaluating it, negotiating with it, and accepting the possibility of failure. Educating prospective investors is therefore a plausible way to improve the market in which the fund operates.

Three numbers that should never be confused

MOST reports that Fund I built a portfolio of 28 companies and invested $5 million. Those are deployment figures. The original $10 million announcement concerns fund size. KMF and KMF-Demeu’s $2 million capital investment, recorded in KMF’s 2022 annual report, concerns backing for the fund. None of these numbers describes the investment manager’s sales.

The newer MOST Accelerator Fund has a $10 million target and a B2B AI focus. An early announcement described a term sheet for up to $3 million from Alem Ventures Fund. Alem Capital Management subsequently announced a signed subscription agreement committing $3 million. That progression is concrete: an intended allocation became a documented commitment. A commitment still should not be mistaken for money already deployed into startups.

MOSTida addresses Seed to Series A, with a stated $30 million fund proposition and operational support. Its published interests include B2B SaaS, digital infrastructure, AI, and financial inclusion. The family consequently offers different entry points for founders. The commercial logic is venture investing: capital goes into companies, and successful growth and exits can generate returns for investors.

The AI assistant that found a buyer

GoatChat makes the investment thesis less abstract. Developed by the Adapt team, it let people converse with AI versions of historical figures, alongside more practical assistant functions. One could seek help with a document and then consult a simulated philosopher. The product’s premise had the amusing quality of making history available on demand, without requiring history to keep office hours.

Spanish media holding Newry Global Media acquired the application, with the sale announced in March 2025. MOST announced completion of its own exit in December. Co-founder Erbol Kopzhasar described the fund staying involved through product pivots. He also pointed to rapid saturation in consumer AI as a reason that selling to a strategic buyer made sense. The change of direction had a market explanation.

“startups grow, and investors receive returns”Alim Khamitov, on the GoatChat exit

CTOgram, an automotive services platform, supplied the other reported 2025 exit. These transactions give MOST examples of the full investment cycle reaching a sale. They cannot establish the outcome of every portfolio company. Their usefulness is narrower and more interesting: they show actual routes from regional startup backing to a buyer, rather than leaving the argument at fundraising announcements.

A network has to lead somewhere

MOST operates alongside alternatives such as Big Sky Capital, Activat VC, MA7 Ventures, and Quest Ventures. Its distinctive proposition is the connected regional infrastructure around its funds. The wider holding’s workspaces, events, and international initiatives put more people within reach. At the 2025 Singapore FinTech Festival, MOST operated a Central Asia pavilion with Astana Hub, IT Park Uzbekistan, and AIFC as partners.

The copyable idea is to identify the missing connection before adding another programme: founder to mentor, investor to credible deal, startup to customer abroad. This approach needs patient capital and people willing to participate repeatedly. It is less suitable for a business content to remain local, or a founder who wants financing without the demands of venture growth. A busy calendar alone will not produce an exit. MOST’s task is to make the meetings lead to something.