Recently, Daniyar Amanaliev, entrepreneur, co-founder of the ololo group of companies, visited Almaty. In his Telegram channel, he shared what creative spaces and modern locations he looked at in the city and what impression they made on him.
Daniyar Amanaliev, Bishkek city, entrepreneur, creative economy, @ololodan
MOST Hub Almaty, @mosthub_almaty
A new space built by the MOST business accelerator. This is the most expensive coworking in Almaty, not counting Level 8. A workplace costs about $ 200, and this allows the guys to distill their audience by choosing startups with the prospect of scaling.
The main goal of the hub is to support the development of the ecosystem, expand the startup funnel. It's cool that they look across Central Asia and see Kyrgyzstan as a promising startup country. The largest investment at the moment is the Kyrgyz Namba One.
The hub is of high quality — 5000 square meters with excellent design and furniture. Basically, open space, which corresponds to the mission. I am sure that this space will play an important role in the development of the entire startup ecosystem in Central Asia.
Tea.factory
This place will open in October. Now it is at the construction stage. There will be a huge IT academy and a creative space on the site of the former tea-making factory. The place is located in an industrial zone, where one by one old factories are turning into educational and creative spaces. It's great to see such a trend! I think our real Stanfords in Central Asia will grow from the bottom.
FIFTYFOUR, @fiftyfour.kz
Cool coworking, where most of the programmers from inDriver have settled. Cool design, detached building. A warm team and lots of light. Coworking is packed to the brim.
Atelier Cauchemar, @atelier_cauchemar
The space in the Park of 28 Panfilov residents, created by Zhanarbek Amankulov and his wife Ayman. Magic is happening here: photo exhibitions are held, super-valuable photos are printed and framed. A bright space in every sense.
Artishock Theater, @artishock_theatre
The famous Almaty private theater. Even the space itself attracts: beautiful, smart, art in every sense.
House on Baribayeva, 36, @dom36kz
The art space of Dauren Tuleev and his team. Here, as in Gryffindor, there are many wonderful stories, deep conversations, insights and the growth of personalities. We got on an excursion of the art curator Vladislav Sludsky on the exhibition of Saule Suleimenova. Both the exhibition and Vladislav's narration went deep into the heart. Saule works with a unique material — creates paintings from plastic bags, which every store uses today.
SmArt.Point, @smartpoint.me
The largest coworking in Central Asia both by area and by the number of residents. There are 12,000 square meters here. Next up is the launch of an additional 4000. This will make SmArt.Point the largest coworking in the world. I have not yet found a refutation of this hypothesis. Bravo to the team of managers who convinced investors to make such large investments.
The whole project was started by one of the main experts on coworking in Central Asia — Amirkhan Omarov. But the successes in the last couple of years are the merit of CEO Aidai Ismailova. I haven't been here for more than two years, so I'm impressed with the progress: the reception was moved to the first floor, a cool patio was created on the street, a sleeping area in capsules appeared. The space is 90% full.
Sail, @sail.coworking
A wonderful new space created by Technodom Holding. In February of this year, I met one of Technodom's top managers, Alexander Lee, at the forum. He's been with the company for 11 years. He started as a sales consultant, managed several large areas of the holding. Now he heads the Service Design Lab. Works to make the Technodom service better than anywhere else. Alexander showed us coworking, a huge TechnoFit gym, and the startup AIRBA — a new marketplace that Technodom is going to conquer the whole of Kazakhstan, and the head office of Technodom, where one of the smartest businesses in Central Asia is being created. We were shocked by the scale. It's cool that the first country outside of Kazakhstan where this holding has entered is Kyrgyzstan. It's also cool that Technodom is building an IT university.
City Hub, @cityhub_kz
Mirgul Omurzakova's project in the very center of Almaty is the best location one could think of. Cozy boutique coworking with reasonable prices. It's cool that based on the success of this project and her experience at Capital Partners, where Mirgul created a luxury coworking Level 8, she is now opening in Atyrau. This will be one of the first coworking spaces in the history of a rich city.
Alatau Creative Hub, @alataucreative.hub
A creative space funded by the city in a building built for the Universiade 2017, next to the Almaty Arena. There is a free coworking and a library. Almost all computers are busy. You can see that people like it here.
