I Have a Plan
I entered the business world to achieve my personal goals. Since childhood, I have been interested in IT. However, everyone told me that this profession would not provide for a family—back in 2000, it was underappreciated and relatively unknown. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try.
I created a personal achievement plan to be completed by the age of 35. This was advice from an acquaintance from Korea, where such life planning techniques are popular. The idea is that you first choose your ultimate goal, such as the field you want to excel in, and then work backward: determining the necessary education for that profession, which university to attend, and so on. With a clear plan, life becomes more understandable. Another important habit is to summarize the year and set goals for the upcoming one. While everyone else is celebrating New Year, I sit with a notebook planning for the year ahead.
My goals by the age of 35 were not aligned with being an employee. At the same time, I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur: as an entrepreneur, you are not the leader; your employees and clients are. I found that unsatisfactory, but I understood that without starting my own company, I wouldn’t achieve my goals by 35.
The plan outlined how much I would earn, what my family and home would be like, and how many countries I would visit. I also abstractly described my team. I achieved my main career goal—creating a company valued at over 7 billion sums.
Now I’m 40, and I have a new plan for the next decade—by the age of 50. My priorities have shifted and now focus more on non-material achievements. For instance, the development of the company’s social initiatives.
The Path to IT
I obtained my education at the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics (MSESI) through distance learning in applied programming for economics, as well as at the Higher School of Business in Uzbekistan.
However, I gained practical knowledge through self-study. I found several instructors for Java, which was new to our country in 2002. I paid $300 for a three-month course, borrowing $100 each month. To repay the debt, I worked in a store.
Until the age of 28, I was an employee—moving from one company to another not for the salary, but to gain experience. This always came with a reduction in income. For instance, earning $2000, I might move to a position that paid $1000 or $700. I worked as a development engineer at Fido-Biznes and as an Oracle trainer at Softline.
While at Softline, I spent my free time developing Smartup. I planned to continue juggling both activities to maintain a stable income, but due to conflicts regarding the company’s development, I decided to leave my job. This was the impetus to start my own business and find clients. By the time I left, I had already implemented the first version of Smartup.
Smartup is a universal platform for automating business processes for companies involved in sales, trade marketing, finance, and inventory management. It works like a flexible constructor, allowing businesses to adapt the system to their specific needs by 90%. With Smartup, companies can automate sales control and inventory tracking, monitor the real-time performance of sales representatives, and manage promotional activities at retail points.
It's important to note that Smartup is suitable not only for distributors or manufacturers in the FMCG sector but also for the telecommunications sector. Our clients include major mobile operators, car manufacturers, producers of building materials, home appliances, the pharmaceutical business, and sectors with field employees who need to gather information and monitor the execution of specific tasks.
Photo: personal archive of the hero
The development of Smartup was made possible thanks to my friend Shukhrat Niyazmetov, who became the first client. At that time, he worked for the Mars company in Uzbekistan. He needed a product to avoid working with data manually. There was also a request for automating order and supply processes. It took three months to develop the first version. We were paid about $700–1000, which was a small amount but still gratifying. In that version, the functions were simple: order reception and inventory tracking. Later, we added recommended orders, and all of this operated on Windows Mobile.
We then found other clients, such as Pepsi. At that time, word of mouth worked well; new clients learned about us from acquaintances who had already appreciated our services.
Initially, I developed the product together with my friend Ortigali Bazarov, who has been working at Google in the AI team for several years. We started, classically, at home. Most startups begin in garages, like Apple. I also programmed and participated in the development at the start. When Smartup found its niche in the market, it was being worked on by just three specialists.
For the first 7–8 months, I paid employee salaries myself, earning through outsourcing—developing and optimizing websites, providing consulting services. I would walk to work and take my lunch with me to save money, as it was important for me to pay my employees on time.
At the beginning of our journey, we faced several challenges. Firstly, business owners did not believe that local software could solve their problems. Clients were also hesitant to transition processes into the digital realm, restructuring traditional businesses. Thirdly, no one was willing to pay for the product or purchase software legally with a license.
Smartup is a local development. Of course, the idea of automation is not new, but the implementation is entirely ours. We approached the business problem based on the requirements and rules of the market at that time, which is why our product began to be actively adopted.
I still often hear that our product was not developed by local specialists. Some clients believe that such a product could not have been created in Uzbekistan. Arguing about it is not my style. Therefore, I take it as a high compliment for our product.
Today, we are one of the market leaders in Uzbekistan, and we also operate in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. We work with brands such as Pepsi, Nestle, Lactalis, Hydrolife, Rozmetov, Henkel, Meros Pharm, SERENE Group, Bayer, Uzum Nasiya, Beeline, UCell, ARTEL, Samsung, AKFA, and many others.
Initially, our entry into the markets of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan was not a planned expansion. It happened naturally—thanks to our clients in Uzbekistan (Hydrolife, Dinay), who conducted business in neighboring countries and requested us to install Smartup for their distributors. Later, as we began to scale, it became clear that the application needed adaptation to perform at the same level.
Over 13 years, the company has evolved from creating a CRM system to transitioning to an ERP system, which has expanded functionality and improved business management. We are also actively developing the financial direction.
Why Green White Solutions
The company Green White Solutions was registered by chance. We were already fully engaged in working on Smartup when one of our clients informed us that he could only pay by transfer—this required us to register the company. We initiated the process at the end of 2011 and received registration in January 2012.
Why is the company named Green White Solutions and not Smartup? We planned to release other products within the company in addition to Smartup, so we needed a different name. We consulted specialists to help us find the right name—we paid around $500 for the service. The list included creative suggestions, but unfortunately, they were already registered. Our option was Green White. The hokimiyat (local administration) said that if we added the word Solutions, they would register it, as that name was free.
“The main goal is to open a company, and then we can rename it,” we thought. In the end, it remained as Green White Solutions, and we like it. Automation is considered part of the green economy; our business helps save natural resources, such as paper. We also invest annually in tree planting.
0GWS Team. Photo: personal archive of the hero
Today, Smartup's turnover exceeds $3 million per year, and the company actively invests in product development as well as funds social initiatives.
I have not yet realized that the business has reached a high level. By local standards, we are successful. But there is always room to raise the bar, especially when it comes to IT.