A trillion-dollar market: where is Kazakhstan's IT sector heading in 2025 and where does business money fit into this race

The Kazakh software development market has stopped being the “service staff” for oil companies and banks. Today it is an industry worth more than 1 trillion tenge that grows faster than the country's GDP.

We have analyzed closed reports and market data from 2022 to 2025 to show a real map of digital transformation: who orders what, how much it costs, and why medium-sized businesses found themselves at the epicenter of a technological storm.

Phenomenon of explosive growth

Если посмотреть на сухие цифры, динамика впечатляет. Объем услуг по разработке ПО и IT-консалтингу в Казахстане пробил психологическую отметку в 1,089 трлн тенге, показав рост на 41% год к году.

Еще интереснее структура этого роста. Если раньше львиную долю занимала продажа «железа» и лицензий, то сейчас драйвер — именно создание уникального кода. Сегмент заказной разработки (custom development) вырос сразу на 60,3%, достигнув 599 млрд тенге. Для сравнения: экономика страны в целом растет на уровне 4-5%, а IT-сектор обгоняет её в 10 раз.

This means one thing: business en masse shifts budgets from offline and traditional marketing to creating their own digital assets.

“Middle Business Trap”: Desire exists but resources don’t?

For a long time, the market was divided between giants (banks, telecoms, national companies) who bought the best developers, and small businesses who were satisfied with website builders. But in 2024-2025, focus shifted to medium-sized businesses (companies with annual turnover over 50 million tenge or higher).

Here there emerged a paradoxical situation:

• Awareness at its peak: According to surveys, 85% of entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan understand that without going digital they will lose the market, and 90% see it as the only way to respond to customer requests.
• Reality lags behind: However, effectively using digital tools do only about 11% of companies.

What’s the problem? Cost and complexity of entry. Market estimates suggest that developing a full-fledged digital product under key (for example, an Uber-like app for logistics or customized ERP) costs $100,000-$300,000. This is a serious investment that scares entrepreneurs accustomed to budgeting for “a site for a million tenge.”

What are companies really buying? (Spoiler: not landing pages)

Demand analysis shows that the era of simple websites is gone. Nowadays, businesses invest in assets that directly affect profit margins:

1. Супер-аппы и экосистемы. Даже локальные игроки (сети фитнес-клубов, ритейл) хотят собственные приложения с программой лояльности, оплатой и сервисом, чтобы не отдавать комиссию агрегаторам.
2. Total integration. Businesses are tired of a "zoo" of systems. The main request is to link 1C, CRM, warehouses, cash registers, and marketplaces into a single organism where data updates in real-time.
3. AI not just for hype. While everyone played around with ChatGPT in 2023, today companies implement AI agents. Such systems can automate up to 40% of routine operations (processing applications, primary documentation), which is critical given labor shortages. Statistics don't lie: companies implementing AI grow revenue 15% faster than competitors.

Labor crisis and search for partner

The main limiting factor of the market is lack of people. Large players heated up salary rates, making it economically unprofitable for midsize businesses to maintain strong in-house teams.

This led to changes in the landscape of contractors. Customers face a difficult choice:

• Global corporations (EPAM, Netcracker, etc.): Guarantee quality, but their bills and bureaucracy often exceed the reach of local businesses, prioritizing Western contracts.
• Freelancers and small studios:: Cheap, but carry huge risks of schedule delays and misunderstanding business logic.

Third path: Visionary Pragmatists At the intersection of these extremes, a new class of companies formed in Kazakhstan—so-called niche visionaries (according to Gartner classification). These studios:

• Have expertise comparable to enterprise level (AI, Big Data, complex architecture).
• Retain boutique-level flexibility and transparency.
• Focus on specific industries (fintech, edtech, logistics), understanding internal business processes rather than just coding.

It is this segment that is growing fastest because it offers businesses not simply "buying developer hours," but solving business problems.

Sailet Strategy: Automation before Code

We at Sailet observe this evolution firsthand. Analyzing the market, we see that successful projects are those where the client and developer work transparently together.

Наш опыт работы (в том числе признание студией №1 в Казахстане по версии Clutch ) подтверждает: сегодня недостаточно просто написать качественный код. Рынок требует партнерства в автоматизации.

Therefore, we took the position of technology partners for those who have outgrown boxed solutions but do not want to drown in the bureaucracy of giant integrators. Whether it's automating pawnshop business (where we became leaders in our niche) or implementing AI analytics for startups—the key success factor becomes process transparency and focus on business metrics..

Summary

2025 will be the year when the gap between "digital" and "analogue" companies becomes critical. A trillion-tenge market isn’t just statistics—it indicates your competitors are already investing in efficiency.

Today's winning strategy isn't bloated payrolls, but finding a partner who possesses both a "visionary" view of technologies (AI, automation) and an "engineering" approach to implementation.

Prepared by the analytical department of Sailet.kz based on data from Profit.kz, IDC, and National Bureau of Statistics.