Could Uzbekistan’s Cashback Superapp Humans Be the Next Big Fintech?
Articles
With two million active users and its revenue doubling within the short space of the year, could Humans be the next big fintech to emerge from its native Uzbekistan?
The superapp, which combines a fintech service, telecoms services and a marketplace, entered the Uzbek market at the dawn of the global pandemic, but as its results for H1 2022 strong indicate, Humans coverage has grown significantly over the past year.
Its expansion and success has been signalled in its most recent financial and operating results, published in the group’s management report.
When looking at the data, the superapp’s revenue for the first half of 2022 amounted to $14.7million, an 57 per cent increase compared to the first half of 2021. As of June 30, 2022, the service has more than two million active users. For comparison, Uzbekistan’s population currently sits around the 34.5 million mark, which means that the superapp has managed to capture nearly six per cent of the country’s population in just two years.
As of June 30, 2022, there were 750,000 activated Humans Visa bank cards, including plastic and virtual ones, with 253,000 cards being activated in the first half of this year alone, which is 62 per cent more than in the first half of 2021.
In terms of card transactions, the superapp experienced an astonishing 364 per cent year-on-year increase during the first half of this year.
Understandably, transaction volume in the mobile app also increased. In the past six months, the volume of consumer-to-consumer transfers by Humans users amounted to 254.5billion so’m ($23.5million). This represents a 722 per cent increase relative to the same period in 2021 and does not include cross-border transfers.
The results published by Humans also noted that customers are now more likely to use multiple services within one interface, citing that its multi-service users grew by 193 per cent in the first half of 2022; compared to the same period in 2021.
One of the most popular services with increased demand was purchases through the Humans marketplace. Humans users spent 134billion so’m (approximately $12.4million) in the marketplace in the first half of 2022. Interestingly, in UZS terms, such spending in the first half of 2022 increased by 758 per cent compared to the same period in 2021.
Humans clients earn cashback, which can be used to pay for mobile communications, Internet services, or other services. In the past six months alone, users received bonuses of 23billion so’m ($2.1million). Compared to the same period in 2021, 82 per cent more cashback was earned.
“We believe that Uzbekistan has great potential for launching digital products, and in the end, we were not mistaken. The Humans strategy has proven itself. The growth rates demonstrate this convincingly,” comments Vladimir Dobrynin, the superapp’s CEO and founder. “One of Humans’ main goals is to make state-of-the-art digital services available to everyone. We want to significantly increase our service’s penetration across the country and reduce the digital divide in Uzbekistan. “We can already see how consumer behaviour is changing and new digital habits are being formed. We are confident that making fintech services available and increasing the number of Internet users is important for building a new digital economy in Uzbekistan. And our growth figures confirm that Humans is helping drive this process.”