A Young Woman From Uzbekistan Built a $500,000 Business And Is Now Transforming Agriculture

Dildora Atajanova has been in entrepreneurship for over eight years. Her first business was Teodora Goods, a company focused on exporting agricultural products from Uzbekistan. In 2020, she became the co-founder and CEO of Dalatek, an agrotech platform that helps digitize the fruit and vegetable supply process for local supermarkets. At first, the service positioned itself as a marketplace for farmers and supermarkets, but over the past five years, it went through several transformations. Today, Dildora is building a cooperative with small and medium-sized farmers to streamline the supply chain of tomatoes across Uzbekistan and abroad.

As part of the joint project by Digital Business and Astana Hub, «100 Startup Stories of Central Asia», Dildora shared how she unexpectedly became the CEO of Dalatek, how much she invested in the startup, and why she shut down a profitable business line. We also talked about why she decided to rethink the project, what major global problem she's working to solve now, and why starting a business doesn’t always require a lot of money.

«Usually, a startup founder comes up with an idea first and finds funding later. For me, it was the other way around»

– Dildora, you started your journey in business with a more traditional model. What kind of work were you doing back then?

– In 2017, I returned to Tashkent after studying engineering at the Asia Pacific University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That same year, I founded Teodora Goods, a company that exports agricultural products from Uzbekistan to markets around the world. The business is still running today.

– Why did you decide to launch a tech startup as well?

– It was a combination of factors. In the agricultural export business, every shipment requires the same set of actions. And there are around 20 different scenarios of what can go wrong, from spoiled vegetables to delays finding packers, and so on.

On top of that, nothing in this business is digitized in Uzbekistan. If you want to hire packers or start working with farmers, you have to get in a car, drive through villages, and ask around for the right people. And during the first few days on the job, you have to personally oversee all the processes.

For example, when it comes to packers, you have to show up at the cold storage facility by 5 a.m., assign people to their spots, and explain how everything should be organized. If you don’t, they might sit wherever they like, and you’ll end up with boxes in one corner and produce in another. Then you have to spend at least an hour packing the goods yourself to get a realistic idea of how much can be done in that time and later evaluate how fast people are working when you're not around.

Despite all the challenges, exporting fruits and vegetables is a highly profitable business. A single truckload can carry goods worth anywhere from $7,000 to $200,000, depending on the cost of the specific product. But if something goes wrong, you could end up losing a lot of money.

After years of running Teodora Goods, I feel like I’ve faced every possible challenge in the business. I really got to understand how everything works from the inside and saw clearly how digital solutions could help fix a lot of the problems we were dealing with.

– At what point did the idea for Dalatek come up?

– Usually, a startup founder comes up with an idea first and then looks for funding. For me, it was the other way around. In 2020, my future co-founder and investor, Laziz Adkhamov, told me he wanted to build an agritech platform to digitize the export process and invited me to join the project as a consultant.

I agreed, but at the very first meeting, I was introduced as the director. Later on, I was given a stake in the company.

– What challenges did you face in the early stages?

– At that point, I had no startup experience or IT knowledge. So for a long time, I was figuring out the processes, implementing Laziz’s ideas, and trying to keep up with everything.

Getting into the Silkway Accelerator by Astana Hub and Google for Startups helped a lot. My experience with Teodora Goods earned me immediate respect since the business had reached a $500,000 turnover in its first year. But when I mentioned how small my share in Dalatek was at the time, the trackers gave me an ultimatum. They said if I didn’t talk to my co-founder and negotiate a bigger stake that same day, I wouldn’t move forward in the program. In the end, I managed to increase my share.

Going through the program helped me understand how startups work and what kinds of challenges I might face. But for the most part, I had to learn everything by doing.

«We went through a huge number of failures and accepted them»

– What funds did you use to develop the project?

– We invested around $170,000 to $200,000 into Dalatek, most of it during the first two years. But it wasn’t a traditional fundraising round. At the end of each month, I would report the expenses to Laziz, and we’d receive the necessary amount, usually between $5,000 and $10,000.

– When did you start earning revenue on your own?

– We made our first stable profit in the third year, when we started working with HoReCa businesses. We acted as an intermediary between food markets and restaurants. We bought products in bulk, sorted them, and delivered them to restaurants. Finding clients wasn’t a problem. HoReCa representatives were happy to work with us, since they couldn’t deal directly with wholesale suppliers. Sometimes a restaurant only needs 5 kg of potatoes, while farmers usually sell in batches starting from 20 tons.

We worked under that model for about four months. Our revenue was doubling every month, and we eventually reached a monthly turnover of $70,000. Our profit was 10% of that, so around $7,000.

– Despite this, you shut down that line of business. Why?

– When we reached 35 restaurant clients, everything started to fall apart. Complaints began coming in about product quality and delivery issues. It became almost impossible to keep operations stable. Our workday started at 5 a.m., and by 6:30 a.m. the products had to be delivered to the restaurants. That meant we had to buy the goods, divide them into batches, issue invoices, and more within that short window.

In that constant rush, we had neither the time nor the resources to properly control everything. As a result, sometimes a faulty or incorrect item would end up in a crate at the bottom.

– Over the five years of its existence, Dalatek has gone through several transformations. What is the startup focused on now?

– We’re rebuilding the project. We’ve gone through a huge number of failures, accepted them, and stopped positioning ourselves as a startup. We realized that before launching mobile apps or other digital products, it’s crucial to first establish strong processes between farmers, big businesses, and the government. And also to address a broader problem that exists in the country.

– What problem are we talking about?

– Uzbekistan lacks a strategy for exporting agricultural products. Right now, around 70% of the country’s produce ends up being wasted. It’s a similar situation in many other countries. This happens because the processes are not properly organized.

At the same time, an export strategy needs to be developed separately for each product. You can’t use the same approach to sell cherries, which grow on trees and spoil in about three weeks, and pumpkins, which grow on the ground and can be stored for up to six months. The size of the farm also plays a big role. A common mistake made by entrepreneurs who don’t understand agriculture is trying to create one solution for everyone involved. Naturally, that doesn’t work.

Over 8 years in business, I’ve often traveled abroad for various training programs. I recently spent a month in Japan, and that trip changed my entire strategy. I realized that before scaling, it’s crucial to bring order to at least one product on a national level. Only then should you start adding others.

– What did you start with?

– I returned to Tashkent and almost immediately received partnership offers. Right now, I'm working with three government agencies as a consultant. We're setting up a tomato supply chain. We're creating a cooperative with small and large farmers who grow tomatoes, uniting everyone under one legal entity and bank account. Then, together, we build a strategy and plan to sell the produce both domestically and for export.

I'm also working on speeding up the creation of insurance products for members of the cooperative. Even though agricultural export is a high-risk business — where you can lose $100,000 overnight — there are still no protection tools available in the country. We're also developing banking solutions, like factoring and financing for procurement.

Another focus area is storage infrastructure. There are plenty of cold storage facilities in Uzbekistan, but rentals often happen informally, without contracts. That means it's nearly impossible to protect your interests if something goes wrong. As part of our pilot project, we're working on inspecting and standardizing these cold storage units to ensure proper conditions and guarantee product quality.

As a result, we're building a closed-loop supply chain that provides stable delivery of products from farmers to end clients, like supermarkets, restaurants, and international buyers. We've already selected the farmers, the insurance and banking solutions are partially ready, and the cold storage facilities are currently being inspected.

«Money isn't always necessary to build a working product»

– Which countries' experience do you pay attention to?

– I closely study international practices and can confidently say that no country in the world has fully solved this problem or anticipated all possible scenarios. There isn’t a single app that allows you to purchase fruits or vegetables by the ton. That’s why I don’t see international peers as competitors, but rather as allies moving in the same direction.

I often talk to entrepreneurs and businesspeople from different industries. As soon as I start telling them about the agricultural sector, they immediately jump in with advice like, «Why don’t you just do it this way?» as if it were that simple. And this happens everywhere — in Uzbekistan, Spain, and so on. People speak from their own experience without really understanding how things actually work in this field.

The same goes for government officials, who are supposed to be developing the sector today. That’s why it makes no sense to sit around waiting for someone «at the top» to fix everything.

At some point, I realized: if not me, then who? I know the realities of the country well. I understand the regions, the local mindset, the psychology of farmers. Plus, I’ve traveled to around 25 countries for work and studied how agri-tech is built around the world. All of that helps me see the bigger picture and understand how to actually turn an idea into real results.

– How much funding is required to establish the cooperative and get it running?

– Right now, we’re not really spending anything. Once you move away from the typical startup mindset where you're constantly pitching and chasing investments, it becomes clear that money isn’t always necessary to build a working product. To register cooperatives, sign agreements with farmers, insurance companies, and banks, what you really need is time, not funding.

As for the technical side, this concept can function just fine even without a mobile app.

– Is there demand from potential customers?

– When we first started working in this direction, we thought most of the sales would come from exports. The plan was to export around 500 tons of produce over three months. But it turned out that just one supermarket chain in Uzbekistan needs 60 tons of tomatoes every day. There is definitely demand, and businesses are ready to pay, especially if you can guarantee consistent supply.

We’ve already signed a contract with the largest supermarket chain in Uzbekistan. There’s also interest from international companies in Russia and Japan. Our revenue model is commission-based. Just one delivery of 20 tons of produce means about $40,000 in turnover. In our case, we’re talking about hundreds or even thousands of tons in exports, so the numbers will be much higher.

– How many people currently work at Dalatek?

– We let go of almost the entire team. There was a time when we weren’t making a profit, but we were still paying salaries. Sometimes I had to invest money from my first business or dip into personal savings. Looking back, I think that was the wrong approach.

– Will your farmers' cooperative have a mobile app?

– After going through the Silkway Accelerator, I’ve stayed in touch with one of the mentors. I recently asked for advice on what to do with the mobile app, since the business can actually function without it. We both came to the conclusion that you don’t have to force the tech side into the project at all costs. A startup isn’t always about a platform or technology. It’s more about the ability to scale rapidly once the model starts to grow.

Right now, our goal is to set up one stable workflow. We want to build a clear system where every stage from receiving the goods to exporting runs smoothly. If this first case works out, we can scale the same model to other types of produce. Only then will it make sense to develop a digital platform or mobile app that lets people buy and sell products online in an automated way.

«Instead of creating a pretty picture, you need to solve real problems»

– How difficult was it to start working on the startup from scratch again?

– At first, my story was perfect for the media: a woman under 30, an agri-tech entrepreneur, active on social media. CNN, BBC, and Uzbek media wrote about me and filmed videos. I was everywhere, invited to podcasts and events. But at some point, I stopped living in illusions and realized that, in reality, we hadn’t built a proper working product. We launched an app, got some users to register, but there was no stable income.

Traveling the world and becoming a mother taught me to value my time. I realized that instead of creating a pretty picture, I needed to focus on solving real problems. Yes, no one in the world has fully streamlined the agricultural export process yet, but I believe it’s possible.

– At what stage of development, in your opinion, is the agri-tech sector in the world right now?

– People don’t know much about agri-tech, so the first impression of a startup often depends entirely on what you say about yourself. You can, for example, claim you have 4,000 farmers, since that many are technically in your database. But in reality, they’re inactive. They don’t use the app or do anything.

Unfortunately, this is a common global practice. Since governments and international organizations actively fund agri-tech, for many it's enough to simply pitch the idea nicely. But checking how real it all is can be easy. Just go to the App Store or Play Market and try to download their app. In 99% of cases, there’s nothing there. At best, you’ll find a form asking for your phone number. And there’s no guarantee anyone will call you back.

Agri-tech has plenty of clients and money, but also no shortage of problems. There’s real work to be done in this space.

– What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

– I often notice that people taking their first steps in entrepreneurship are very afraid of failure and spend too much time preparing. You need to take things more lightly. If something doesn’t work out, it just means you need to change something and keep going.

My advice to startup founders is to go through no more than one accelerator every three years. I’ve seen so many cases where founders jump from one program to another, pitch at competitions, and so on. First, it takes a lot of energy. And second, it shifts your focus away from the product. Instead of actually making money, you start living in an illusion and believing in a polished image that doesn’t really exist.

But the truth is always simple. The real sign that your business is working is profit. If you're bringing in steady income, you don't waste time on endless pitches or chasing investors.

Besides, a lot of startup founders believe investors always know what they should be doing. But the truth is, no one really knows the perfect way. If you understand your field well, just go out there and do the work. You don’t need to constantly chase «the startup» label or prove anything to anyone.