Today’s piece is something special for our blog. In it, Marina Shabalina, CEO of ADVES, shares her perspective on PR and business reputation in one of the most promising regions — Central Asia. The article is based on her more than four years of experience working and communicating with business owners in Central Asia, as well as top managers and stakeholders.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Central Asia is one of the fastest-growing subregions in the world. This dynamic, democratic environment, while preserving its own identity, has firmly established itself as a new and important economic zone. Flexible policies, digitalization of society, an attractive business climate, and a favorable geographic position are already bearing fruit, opening the way for companies bold enough to compete for leadership. But why are more and more companies realizing that success is hardly achievable without an active public image? How can they avoid letting competitors exploit the information vacuum and make it a resource for themselves?
Favorable Starting Conditions
Central Asia, as a subregion, lies at the crossroads of major trade routes and at the intersection of interests of both Western and Eastern developed economies. This advantage fuels sustained interest in the subarea, which continues to grow dynamically despite global turbulence. Average GDP growth in 2025–2026 is projected at 2.5%. While this figure may not seem particularly high, compared with the projected 1.2% in Germany and an estimated 1.0% in Russia, Central Asia represents a fairly resilient structure whose growth potential is hard to overestimate.
This is primarily due to the prospects opened up by the developing financial and IT sectors in Central Asia. The key driver here is technological adoption: governments across the subregion are actively investing in smart city technologies, AI, and other technological solutions. Internet penetration is also increasing: in three Central Asian countries, it has already exceeded 80%. Moreover, Kazakhstan ranks 24th in the E-Government Development Index, while Uzbekistan is among the top 15 countries worldwide in terms of GDP growth rates.
This momentum directly affects the business climate: the region is currently experiencing an IT and fintech boom. Kazakhstan has nearly 2,000 startups, Kyrgyzstan more than 300, and Uzbek companies are receiving support from global giants. In Uzbekistan, according to forecasts, the IT services industry will grow by 9%—a figure that can be considered outstanding even by global standards. Companies from the country are already entering international markets: for example, the digital ecosystem Uzum became one of the first Uzbek companies this year to place a record-breaking bond issuance for the country, totaling over $20 million. The issuance is aimed at large institutional investors, who are showing growing interest in Central Asia.
Rising economic activity is also stimulating the development of other sectors: following IT and fintech, traditional banking, investment, and insurance structures are gaining momentum. There is every reason to believe that local businesses entering global markets will scale up and learn to work with representatives of other markets and cultures—both investors and partners. At this stage, however, strong performance indicators alone will no longer be sufficient.
The Root of the Problem
At present, Central Asian businesses face a challenge related to competing for investors — attracting those who already have some familiarity with the market and are looking for reliable partners both within and beyond the subregion. At this point, tasks related to self-presentation—and more precisely, interaction with external markets—become no less important than performance metrics. And this is where the situation becomes more complex.
Traditional Central Asian business culture tends to avoid excessive openness. Businesses are accustomed to limiting information about management and owners, company plans, and internal processes. This stands in stark contrast to the Western approach, which emphasizes transparency and even open discussion of certain internal processes with the public. On the one hand, closedness helps avoid unnecessary external pressure; on the other, it creates a barrier of misunderstanding that deters potential investors.
Personalities also matter to partners. The world is used to the idea that even “leader-centric” companies do not revolve around a single individual. For example, Apple—often seen as driven by one person’s vision—had, in addition to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and the current CEO Tim Cook present in the public information space. In Central Asia, even the first person of a company sometimes remains in the shadows, preventing partners from forming a clear image of the people they will be working with. This is important for both Western and Eastern investment players.
The same applies to the “meanings” and “missions” that businesses assign themselves. In many cases, a company that is “just making money” loses out in the competition for attention to an organization that focuses on labor ethics or social issues. Even if these are merely declarations, the factor remains significant.
In this respect, Central Asian businesses still lag behind players from other countries. Companies remain efficient and demonstrate solid figures, yet stay media-shy, which negatively affects their investment attractiveness. And, of course, where companies do not speak for themselves, stereotypes gain special weight. As a result, in the absence of information from the companies themselves, partners become hostages to superficial opinions, and local businesses risk missing their chance and remaining confined within the region.
The Art of Presence
Central Asia is a strategically important region, notable for its distinctive culture, stability, and the pragmatic approach of leadership focused on advancing national interests. Attention to the region will continue to grow, but without preparation—including at the level of meaning and narratives—local businesses will face difficulties. In a competitive struggle for their future, they will be forced to start speaking for themselves, not only by working effectively but also by acting as carriers of ideas.
In particular, it is important to begin paying attention to reputation and PR issues: from overall positioning to working with personal brands and expanding media presence. Competent positioning makes it possible to form a clear and unique image with which a company will be associated, while a personal brand provides a link to specific individuals whose personal qualities and business reputation enable the company to achieve its goals. At the same time, a template PR tactic of “flooding everything with press releases” will not work: society has changed and consumes content differently than it did even ten years ago. The dominant share of content now falls on messengers and social platforms, the growing popularity of generative neural networks, and the general shift toward simpler communication formats force businesses to adapt.
Today, business is perceived and evaluated inseparably from the value proposition it carries, and to overcome communication challenges, local players are interested in quickly and comprehensively catching up on what has been missed. In other words, they need high-quality PR.
Issues of reputation, positioning, and the overall information environment surrounding a company are what potential foreign investors or partners pay attention to. In this sense, literally every element of a business’s operations matters. Therefore, control over information flows, as well as work with data already published on various online resources, is becoming increasingly important. Where there is no control and no unified stream of information from the company itself, speculation comes to the fore—everything that can be perceived by partners and investors in a negative light. Reputation management is a separate area that all leading companies have embraced, and one that advanced Central Asian organizations are already beginning to focus on.
At the same time, in creating a business identity, it is critically important to avoid blind copying. Making oneself known while preserving uniqueness, without adapting to a single “Western” or “Eastern” standard, is the key task facing any business that wants to be in demand. Finding precisely this balance will become the central focus in this area. The most successful outcomes of this process will shape not only the business landscape, but also the international perception of the entire subregion.
Ultimately, paradoxical as it may seem, even now one can confidently say that the future struggle for leadership among Central Asian business structures will be determined not only by performance indicators, but also by companies’ ability to present their achievements and justify why they are the ones worthy of trust.