Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.
I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us this week.
I’m thrilled to announce that Astana Motors and MyVentures has invested $3.5 million in the Automotive Ventures Mobility Fund II. The goal of this investment and partnerships is to expand Astana’s presence into the U.S. market and discover breakthrough automotive technologies and solutions.
If you recall, and I as I discussed on a Future of Automotive segment last month, Chip Perry, Brian Benstock and I traveled to Almaty, Kazakhstan in early December to visit the Astanta team, and all of us came away amazed at the sophistication and scale of the company and their operations.
Kazakhstan is really a fascinating country. Bordering Russia to the north and west and China to the east, Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth-largest country by land area and the largest landlocked country. And it has a population of 20 million people.
Kazakhstan declared independence on December 16th, 1991, becoming the last Soviet republic to declare independence. Ten days later, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.
Maybe most relevant for our audience here on this segment, the country has a new car market of 200,000 units sold per year and a used car market of 1,000,000 vehicles sold per year.
Parent company Astana Group brings together companies active in the non-resource sector of the economy: the automotive industry, car sales, and development of a network of shopping and entertainment centers.
Astana Motors was founded in 1992, and is now the official distributor in Kazakhstan many of the world’s best brands: Hyundai, Subaru, BMW, MINI, Motorrad, Jaguar Land Rover, Haval, Great Wall Motors, TANK, Chery, Changan, BYD, Genesis, Golden Dragon, Foton, as well as being the official dealer of both Toyota and Lexus. The company also operates in Uzbekistan, where its the distributor of Hyundai and dealer for the BYD brand.
Astana Motors now has 52 dealership locations, representing 18 of the strongest OEM brands and has 7,600 employees. And you really have to see these new car dealership locations. They’re as impressive, if not more, than anything you would see at dealerships across the U.S.
Astana’s Hyundai passenger car plant has been operating since October 2020. The plant’s capacity is 50 thousand cars per year.
We also got to see their brand new, nearly complete multi-brand full-cycle plant for the production of four different Chinese automakers: Great Wall Motors’ Haval and Tank brands, Chery and Changan. The production area will be more than 200,000 sq.m, and the total cost of the project is more than $350m USD.
The planned production capacity of this brand-new multi-brand plant is 90 thousand units per year, with new cars rolling off the production line every 2.5 minutes. Astana Motors plans to supply 40% of the total volume of produced cars to the Kazakhstan domestic market, and 60% for export.
Astana also has a very sophisticated used car operation.
Mycar has seven retail supercenter locations across the country, and any one of them compares to the best and largest retail locations you would ever see in the U.S.
Mycar.kz is a technology ecosystem that consists of the Mycar.kz super app, Mycar auto centers, the Mycar Finance microfinance organization, an online service that allows you to receive credit offers from banks; Mycredit and the Mycar Pro business automation system.
All OEM brands are integrated into the Mycar.kz application, where a customer can buy a new car online in 25 minutes through credit offers from 8 partner banks. Additionally, consumers can buy or sell a used car through classifieds from individuals and partner car dealerships, or schedule a car for service at Astana Motors and Mycar dealerships.
MyVentures is Astana’s venture capital arm. MyVentures focuses on Kazakhstani and foreign startups in areas such as FinTech, MedTech, e-commerce, and corporate software based on artificial intelligence. The fund provides not only capital, but also comprehensive support for startups at early stages of development.
The goal of this new investment in Autotmotive Ventures is to enable Astana to have a presence in the U.S. market, provide visibility and access into early-stage automotive technology solutions, and explore implementation of these technologies back into their home market.
It goes without saying that we’re both honored and thrilled for this exciting partnership with Astana Motors and MyVentures. We look forward to an incredible journey together, and we’ll be sure to introduce you to the Astana team at the next industry conference.
So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.
Every week we highlight interesting companies in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and take the opportunity here on this segment each week to share that company with you.
Today, our new company to watch is CloudX.
CloudX is an accounting automation solution provider that designs, operates, and supports adaptable digital transformation solutions for a range of accounting functions including accounts payable and accounts receivable.
If your business or department is still spending countless employee hours processing paper documents, you’re losing time, money, and resources.
CloudX works to elevate business finance processes to a higher degree of efficiency, accuracy, and visibility.
They create finance automation solutions that help you make well-informed decisions about the future of your business and your industry.
They believe in the value of multi-tool integrations and the importance of making your job easier, not harder.
Use CloudX to digitize, automate, and monetize your entire accounts payable process.
If you’d like to learn more about CloudX you can check them out at www.cloudxdpo.com
So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment.
If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.
Don’t forget to check out my first book, “The Future of Automotive Retail,” and my brand new book, “The Future of Mobility“, both of which are now available on Amazon.com.
Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!
