ANALYSIS: Uzbekistan's digital week: the market retreats, the robots arrive, the state watches
ANALYSIS: Uzbekistan's digital week: the market retreats, the robots arrive, the state watches
Three stories out of Uzbekistan this week describe the same country from three different angles, and together they say something about where its digital economy is heading.
First, Yandex is closing its marketplace in Uzbekistan. Market Yandex Go stops taking orders on November 10, less than two years after launch. Yandex is not leaving: it is concentrating on grocery delivery through Yandex Lavka and its Shops service. A global platform tried e-commerce, decided it did not work, and is betting instead on fast delivery.
Second, Yandex Lavka is about to put robot couriers on the streets of Tashkent. Before the end of the year, autonomous robots will start delivering groceries and ready meals on routes up to 2 km, reading traffic lights and steering around obstacles, with a remote operator as backup. It is the same company, the same city, the opposite direction of travel: out of the marketplace, into automation.
Third, students at several Tashkent universities have been told to install an app called Xavfsiz talaba, Safe Student. The app carries their personal details, course and payment information and a panic button, and it doubles as the key to enter the university and the dormitory. University officials said the order came from the prosecutor's office. The Prosecutor General's office says it gave no such order.
The common thread is that digital convenience in Uzbekistan now arrives with a gatekeeper attached. A delivery robot is convenient, and it is also a machine that knows where you live. A student app is useful, and it is also a record of where a student is. None of this is unusual on its own. What is striking is how fast it is all arriving at once, and how the mandate for the student app exists without anyone in authority willing to own it.
What to watch: whether the robot deliveries actually launch before the end of the year and expand beyond pilot areas, whether the Safe Student mandate spreads to more universities or gets walked back after the prosecutor's denial, and whether Yandex's retreat from the marketplace signals a harder market for foreign platforms or just one product that did not fit.
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