This piece is about Kaspi.kz, a Kazakh super-app that combines payments, shopping, and finance. Its founder says success comes from product quality, not user count—if the app is bad, users leave everywhere. They even killed a credit card business that made hundreds of millions because customers hated it. Now they are helping offline retailers go online and buying 65% of Turkey's biggest e-commerce site, Hepsiburada. Key holdings: Kaspi.kz (very sticky, highly profitable); Hepsiburada (acquired, top Turkish e-commerce).
Kaspi.kz is a leading fintech company in Kazakhstan, known for its super app that integrates payments, digital wallets, e-commerce, and financial services, addressing pain points such as low financial inclusion and insufficient traditional banking infrastructure. CEO Mikhail Lomtadze transformed it
This episode's guest is Mikhail Lomtadze, co-founder and CEO of Kaspi.kz. He led the company's transformation from a small retail bank (2007) into Kazakhstan's super-app, which recently listed on Nasdaq. The episode's most weighty judgment is: Lomtadze argues that Kaspi's success stems from treating "product quality" as a life-or-death line, rather than financial metrics — a survival necessity in a relatively limited 20M population market; in larger markets, companies tend to use high growth to mask user churn from low-quality products, and this "negative network effect" will erupt when growth stops.
Kaspi's core is the "super-app" model, integrating payments, e-commerce, finance, travel, government services, and more into a single app. Lomtadze believes the key to this model's success lies not in technology, but in the ultimate pursuit of product quality.
Mikhail Lomtadze argues that the success of a super-app depends on "product network effects" rather than "user network effects." He emphasizes that if product quality is poor, consumers will churn across all services simultaneously, creating a "negative network effect." Kaspi's countermeasure is a company-wide focus on Net Promoter Score (NPS) as the sole performance metric.
Lomtadze offers a counterintuitive perspective: In a small market of 20M people, product quality is a "life-or-death" imperative, forcing the company to build the right mechanisms; in a large market of 300M people, companies can more easily use marketing and growth to mask low quality.
Mikhail Lomtadze argues that in larger markets, companies often use "high growth" to "mask" poor product quality. He points out that when the market is large enough, a company can continuously acquire new users while losing millions of dissatisfied users, yet still appear to be growing on the surface. But when growth stops, this "negative network effect" will lead to irreversible user churn, with extremely high recovery costs.
Kaspi's growth does not rely on a single explosive product, but rather on continuously expanding into high-value, low-penetration vertical industries (such as retail and travel services) on top of its existing large user base.
Mikhail Lomtadze argues that Kaspi's existing 14 million users and 7,000+ merchants are a "growth asset" rather than a "constraint." The company is monetizing this asset through "servicing retail" and "vertical expansion," and plans to enter the Turkish market through acquisitions.
| Position | Guest's Stance | Key Data |
|---|---|---|
| Kaspi.kz | Core position, holds and is bullish | $20B market cap, $2B+ net income, 25% annual growth, 14M+ MAU, 67% DAU/MAU, $80B+ payment volume, $10B GMV, $20B financing volume |
| Hepsiburada | Acquisition (65% stake), bullish | One of the largest e-commerce platforms in Turkey, EBITDA positive, 83M+ population market |
1. The trump card of a super-app is not user scale, but product network effects (Mikhail Lomtadze): If the product is poor, consumers will churn across all functions, creating a "negative network effect"; conversely, a high-quality product can drive adoption of all new services, achieving a "positive network effect."
2. The survival pressure of a "small market" forces Kaspi to treat product quality as a life-or-death line (Mikhail Lomtadze): "In a country of 20M people, if 1M users are unhappy, we are done. We don't have any other choice." This pressure forced the company to establish a mechanism with NPS as the sole performance metric.
3. The company once killed its credit card business, which contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, because its NPS was negative (Mikhail Lomtadze): "That was about a third of our business, couple hundred million dollar contribution to our net income. And we sort of decided to kill that product." This was "bad money" because it "degraded people's lives."
4. "Extreme simplification" is the core product philosophy enabling Kaspi's high efficiency and profitability (Mikhail Lomtadze): Launch only one core function at a time, then add one new feature each quarter. This reduces people, operational, and education costs, ensuring the company operates lean from day one and ultimately achieves profitability.
5. Companies in large markets often use "high growth" to "mask" low-quality products (Mikhail Lomtadze): "...in the bigger markets, people substitute basically they just mask with a high growth mask equality of the product." When growth stops, this "negative network effect" becomes quickly apparent.
6. Kaspi does not compete with retailers; it helps them (Mikhail Lomtadze): The company provides offline retailers with technology, logistics, advertising, and financial services (working capital loans) to help them go online, creating a win-win within the platform ecosystem.
7. The fresh e-commerce business became profitable within 12 months, with a net profit margin of 6-7% (Mikhail Lomtadze): "We made it profitable within the first 12 months... net income margin on that business was about 6-7%." This is attributed to its focus on the "weekly shopping" model (average order value ~$30) rather than instant delivery, optimizing unit economics.
8. Product teams have no financial KPIs, only quality KPIs (Mikhail Lomtadze): "Our product guys don't have financial metrics, they don't have financial KPIs... The most important is the quality of the product." This fundamentally changes the team's incentive structure, focusing them on creating user value rather than chasing short-term revenue.