Uzbekistan
We document people in Uzbekistan who turn constraints into possibilities.
one of twenty, still standingTashkent
The story of building e-commerce, logistics and payment infrastructure from scratch in Uzbekistan.
Three different couriers would arrive for a single order.
9 min read
Djasur Djumaev and co-founders
Sourced to INSEAD Emerging Markets Podcast · Entrepreneur
People
All people →Co-founder & CEO, Uzum
Founder, twolabs.ai
Founder, MyTaxi and Express24
Founder, Teodora Goods & Dalatek
Inventor & founder, Bukhara
Ideas
All ideas →Readings drawn from the cases, never from the air.
Across three cases, nobody was refused. There was simply no precedent, no office and no one whose job it was to say yes — and each acted anyway.
Bias to Action · Self-Authorship · Disagreeability
Three cases reach the outcome by using an asset that was already there — a chat app, a body of research, an insight from a dead product — rather than acquiring a new one.
Resourcefulness · Clear Thinking
Three cases answer an absence by constructing the missing thing themselves: delivery and payment rails, a national community, a mandate for buildings nobody was protecting.
Community Building · Persistence · Bias to Action
A single documented case, published as an observation rather than a pattern: a product was shut down while it was still producing revenue, because its market was visibly ending.
Clear Thinking · Disagreeability
Agency Index
Open the index →Moves before the conditions are settled.
Works with what is already there instead of waiting for the right conditions.
Writes their own brief rather than accepting the one they were handed.
Stays with the same work across years rather than weeks.
Reads the situation as it is, including when that is inconvenient.
Holds a position the room does not share, and carries the cost of it.
Builds the thing that lets other people act.
Earns the outcome through depth of practice rather than positioning.
Most people wait for the perfect moment.
High agency people build the moment.
August 2026