Alexey Li (left) and Adylzhan Khashtamov: Eyeing South-east Asia
Aviata.kz, a two-year-old Kazakhstan flight OTA, is getting set to enter Indonesia through a partnership and will be launching aviata.Indonesia soon.
Said CBDO Alexey Li, “We believe we have the technology and we understand travel, and we have found a good local partner.”
He also believes that the newly-emerging Indonesian online travel market has similar characteristics to Kazakhstan’s in terms of how consumers search and plan online but buy offline and how they choose to pay.
Aviata.kz, which was established in October 2013, claims a 30% share of the OTA market. “The market is getting interesting and it’s encouraging us to expand into hotels as well as into new markets.”
Started by three founders, Aviata claims US$2.2 million of gross sales a month. About 70% of its sales are domestic and outbound sales are to destinations such as Russia, Europe and the US.
Li said the company is also interested in the wider South-east Asian market.
Senior software developer Adylzhan Khashtamov, who’s part of the start-up team, said the early months were challenging. “You have to be very fast, deliver the product as soon as possible, organize the internal systems very fast and then you have to make sure you provide the best customer experience.”
Call centres are a key part of Aviata’s offerings because Kazakhstanis are still new to ecommerce and thus need hand-holding.
“A lot of people are using different payment channels and many may book online but pay by cash and at least 20% of customers have special requests that we have to tend to offline.”
With 25 staff in total, the company is also seeing an uptake in mobile. “Forty percent of our users are using mobile to browse our site,” said Li.
According to this article, Kazakhstan is among post-Soviet leaders in 4G penetration.
In a study of mobile Internet penetration by analysts of J’son & Partners Consulting, Armenia is the leader with 68%, followed by Kazakhstan with 67%. The next country is Russia, where 63% of the population use mobile Internet.
