Home page / 100 startup stories from Central Eurasia Madiyar Ergali and Elaman Bauyrzhanuly have been developing the Shyraq AI startup for two years, which helps teachers draw up plans, create games, videos, presentations and other interactive formats for use in the classroom. Especially for the joint project of Digital Business and Astana Hub “100 startup stories of Central Eurasia,” Madiyar spoke about why the project is not looking for an investor, how ethical it is to monetize a service for teachers, and how the team is solving the problem of neural network hallucinations. Read this text in Kazakh Read this text in English — Tell us about yourself. What were you doing before Shyraq AI? — I’m from Taraz, I studied at the Kazakh-Turkish Lyceum. There, an interest in creating something new arose: he participated in Olympiads in computer science and robotics, and took third place in the international competition of robotics projects Infomatrix. Then I realized how exciting it is to solve complex problems with the help of IT. Then he entered Nazarbayev University to major in Computer Science and from the 3rd year began working in web development, creating telegram bots. After university, I was immediately invited to work remotely for a company in Armenia. There's about
I worked as a developer for six months and realized that I didn’t like working for someone else. Then a classmate and I opened an educational center in Taraz - an “after school” for schoolchildren, where they could improve their math and English skills. We invested in renovations, but, unfortunately, we were unable to attract enough customers. The center was closed, and then it took me a long time to pay off my debts. In 2023, the artificial intelligence boom began, and I decided to work in this direction: I got a job as a data scientist in a bank. I quickly got used to it, raised my grade and realized that routine processes can be easily automated. As a result, I spent 2-3 hours a week on work tasks, and studied the rest of the time. — Did the bank know that you were working like this? - No, but that wasn't a problem. The bank is a huge structure that functions stably even with minimal involvement of individual employees. Many specialists simply perform routine tasks at their place, but I did not want to waste time on this. Therefore, I automated the work, but performed all the tasks in full - I was engaged in analytics and data collection, solving data engineering issues. — Active people in the banking industry quickly become bored, as in most
In this structure, any changes take a very long time to be agreed upon. And I want to develop quickly and create something new. He left to teach at a private school, and in his free time he outsourced projects - he helped integrate AI functions into applications via API. Then I worked for 3-4 months in a good position at the FUN&SUN company - I implemented an internal document management system based on AI and a corporate RAG system (from Retrieval-Augmented Generation - a technology for connecting AI models to a document or data base). Although I worked at school for only one semester, I realized that the work of a teacher is comparable in load and responsibility to the work of a doctor. In Kazakhstan, teachers are little valued, although they sacrifice their time and effort for the development of other people's children. That’s when the idea arose that it was possible to create a service to solve teachers’ problems. At this time, I met my current partner, Elaman Bauyrzhanuly. Together we started making Shyraq AI. — How did you choose a business partner? — We were introduced by a mutual friend. He said that there was an excellent sales and marketing specialist who wanted to launch an IT project, and suggested that we join forces. We talked and have been successfully working together for almost two years now. From the very beginning
divided responsibilities: I am responsible for product and technology, and Elaman is responsible for sales and marketing. I advise all IT specialists who want to go into business to look for partners who cover their weaknesses. Because developers are deep into solving technical problems, and there is no energy left for sales. This requires an energetic person who knows how to communicate and convey the value of the product. This is exactly what happened to us. Plus, Elaman had a successful business aimed at teachers, so he understood this audience very well. — What problem does Shyraq AI solve for teachers? — First of all, planning lessons and working with papers: drawing up short-term plans (STP), author’s programs, scientific projects. With the help of AI, processes have been automated, and this reduces the time that the teacher previously spent on planning by about 90%. — Does the teacher need to be able to write prompts for this? – No, and this is a fundamental point - they deliberately moved away from the logic of “pure ChatGPT”, where you need to be able to correctly formulate a request. Therefore, in Shyraq AI, the teacher selects a subject, class, language and lesson topic from drop-down lists, and then presses the “Generate” button. In 3-5 minutes he will be completely ready
a short-term plan in the very official format required by the Ministry of Education: learning objectives from the curriculum, the purpose of the lesson, expected results by level, all five stages of the lesson (organizational moment, middle, consolidation, reflection, homework), assessment criteria with descriptors, differentiation, interdisciplinary connections, values. All this can be immediately uploaded into Word, printed and submitted to the head teacher without a single edit. – Why doesn’t the system just produce random text from the Internet? – We do not use static templates from the database and “naked” AI that invents the content. We have a hybrid system. That is, official textbooks of Kazakhstan are pre-loaded and indexed in Shyraq AI - for each subject, class and language. And when the teacher generates a plan, the system, through RAG technology, retrieves real tasks and materials from the official textbook - indicating the page, and even pulls up pictures of the tasks. This is how you get those ~90% time savings: if previously it took the teacher 1.5-2 hours to write a plan, now it takes 5 minutes, and the plan is tied to a real textbook, and not to “water” from the Internet. But, of course, creative input
a teacher is still required - the teacher must read the plan and make changes if necessary. For teachers who have absolutely no time, there are ready-made sets of SSP (short-term lesson plan), BZHB (summative assessment for the section) and TZHB (summative assessment for the quarter), which were developed by professional methodologists and curators with a master's degree. When a teacher does not have enough ready-made material, using AI inside the platform, he himself generates presentations, documents and games. If you have difficulties using a computer or smartphone, our curators call you via video call and teach you. — What other tools does Shyraq AI have besides lesson plans? – We introduce interactive elements: educational games based on AI, generation of tasks for use in lessons. How it works: the teacher simply needs to enter the title of the lesson, topic, select goals and book, and also indicate the game that will be developed through AI for his lesson. There is also a prompt field if the teacher wants to customize something. Then you need to press a button and everything will be ready in 3-5 minutes. There are simulations of laboratory work and experiments in physics and chemistry. We are currently developing a
similar solutions for biology, geography and history of Kazakhstan. This is especially important for schools that do not have the resources or equipment to conduct real-life experiments. We also have “Ybyray Bot”, optimized for educational standards in Kazakhstan for quickly finding accurate answers, the “Tulga” service for talking with famous historical figures and a presentation designer for lessons. A very important technological feature: all materials can be downloaded and used offline. This feature is especially important for teachers from rural schools, where there are often problems with the Internet. — How do you fight artificial intelligence hallucinations? “No one in the world has yet completely solved this problem.” According to our observations, most often AI invents non-existent things in humanities subjects, when it comes to old literary works, the texts of which are not on the Internet. In such cases, we recommend that teachers take photographs of the relevant pages of the book and attach them to the request as context. Well, our methodologists periodically recheck the generated content, and we adjust the prompts if necessary. The RAG system also helps, allowing the AI to take data strictly from approved school textbooks
. But the most important thing is the teacher’s personal verification of the content before he shows it to the children. — Tell us about the team and technology stack. — Our IT department consists of three specialists (including me as CTO), who do the work for ten people. We also have about a dozen supervisors-methodologists, 5 marketers and 20 sales managers. At its peak, when we pooled resources with my partner’s second business, the staff numbered 70 people, including 13 people in the IT department along with interns. As for technology, we use a combination of models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. We tried to train our own local LLM models on GPU servers, but this is not economically feasible for mass use. Maintaining your own servers requires a huge investment, which will not pay off when working with teachers. So now we combine different models depending on the task (some work faster, others are cheaper), and also use third-party services for video generation of characters in the Tulga module. — How is the project monetized? — We work on a subscription basis — monthly or annual. Prices depend on the tariff: there is a classic limited subscription, and there is a credit system
tariffication, where the user does not have strict restrictions on functions, but internal points are written off. For example, you can spend all the credits to generate 200 CSPs at once. Now we have switched to a credit system and reduced the cost of the basic tariff by 2 times - from 10 to 5 thousand tenge per month. Let's see what the demand will be in the new academic year. Honestly, if teachers used the limits at 100%, we would be working at a deep disadvantage. But the majority uses the platform only when absolutely necessary, which helps balance the economy. In addition, the peak use of the platform occurs at the beginning of the school year, and then activity drops, so we have a positive result. — There is a profit, but small. We worked at a loss for about a year and a half. Even now, during the low season, sometimes we go into the minus, but on average for the year we reach zero or a slight plus. Nevertheless, the project is socially significant - it really helps teachers save time. In general, making a lot of money from teachers is a dubious story from a moral point of view. Therefore, in parallel, we are developing another startup, Xrox, a platform for automating communications on Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram using chat bots. We already have
there are large clients with a turnover of about a billion tenge who actively use the system to receive leads. As for Shyraq AI, we would like to make the platform as accessible as possible to all teachers in Kazakhstan, so now we are trying to build relationships with the government. - How will it work? — We want the Ministry of Education to centrally purchase the system for teachers, so that they do not have to pay for Shyraq AI from their own pockets. Still, for many teachers, even a few thousand tenge a month is a significant expense. Some schools are already acquiring access to our platform through government tenders at the request of regional education departments. This experience shows that the model is viable. — How many teachers use the platform? — Regularly about 13 thousand. Of the more than 400 thousand teachers in the country, about 155 thousand follow our Instagram account. There are 65 thousand registered users in the system, of which 58.5 thousand have tested the demo version, that is, they know about the possibilities. And it seems to us that we have reached the approximate ceiling of the solvent audience of teachers in Kazakhstan, which means the next logical step is to reach the state level. - How hard was it?
Convince teachers to buy a subscription at launch? — Since Elaman had already been working with teachers for 1.5 years before we met (he helped teachers pass certification, write original programs and methodological journals for advanced training), his experience helped us make a confident start: we immediately understood the pains of the audience. But the customer base was built up from scratch, and the most difficult thing at the start was getting the first positive reviews in order to gain trust. — Which customer acquisition channels work best now? — Instagram, TikTok and word of mouth. In the last six months, word of mouth has been especially powerful, since teachers have been officially required to master artificial intelligence tools, and they are looking for useful services, and when they find them, they recommend them to each other. — What is the advantage of Shyraq AI, because a teacher can generate something in ChatGPT? Moreover, AI giants are quickly introducing new functionality directly into their services. — Our main value is not generating content for tokens. The strengths of Shyraq AI are the locality of the service, curatorial support and methodological adaptation to the standards of a particular country. We teach teachers not just how to use our platform,
and develop, blog, create media and keep up with technological progress. Of course, large AI models will develop, and we will develop along with them, integrating their new capabilities into our product. It seems to me that companies that know how to retain their customer base, provide quality human service and adapt to change will survive any crisis. — How ready are Kazakhstani teachers to implement AI and create interactive materials for lessons? “Many teachers still want everything done for them. And our curators often have to explain that the platform is a tool for one’s own creativity, and not a complete replacement for the teacher. But there are also very active teachers who quickly mastered the system, began conducting training seminars in their schools and regions, write blogs and help colleagues create PCBs and proprietary programs on a commercial basis. We encourage active ambassadors of our service: we issue honorary badges for Shyraq AI partners. — How much money did you invest in Shyraq AI? Have you attracted investment? — We are developing with our own funds: the partner at the start invested about 60 million tenge from the income of his other business
ness. We also attracted loans: last year about 20 million tenge, this year - about 40 million tenge. All these obligations have been closed, and the initial investment has already been recouped. — Do you need an investor now? — No, we are not looking for investors. But we are open to partnership when entering the markets of the CIS countries as a franchise, if there are partners who are ready to take on operating and marketing costs in these regions. - Why franchise? — We are still afraid to enter new markets on our own, so as not to weaken our position in Kazakhstan. History knows many examples of startups overestimating their strength during international expansion and failing. For us, Shyraq AI is a project through which we contribute to the development of Kazakhstan and earn money in other IT areas. — How do you see the project in the long term? — We are preparing to enter the audience of students - we will offer the first services at the beginning of the school year. We are now actively adapting the best world practices to our education system. For example, Singaporean teaching methods, which are based on team forms of work. Therefore, Shyraq AI will soon have high-quality interactive training modules that Kazakh children will be able to take in
e-school time. In general, I want to build an educational ecosystem - a super application that unites teachers, students and parents. Up to and including a marketplace for office supplies, which can be launched with partners. I think the next three years will be enough to understand how viable this model is. Madiyar Ergali men Elaman Bauyrzhanuly ekі zhyldan beri mugalimderge sabak zhosparyn kuruga, oyyn, beynerolic, presentation zhane sabakta koldanylatyn ozge de interactive materialdar Azirleuge komektesetin Shyraq AI startups damytyp zhatyr. Digital Business pen Astana Hub birlesip zhuzege asyryp zhatkan "Ortalyk Eurasian 100 startup tarihy" zhobasy ayasynda Madiyar startup nege investor izdemeytinin, mugalimderge arnalgan services akyly etu kanshalyk durys ekenin zhane AI-dyn katelerin kalay sheshіp zatkanyn aytyp reed. — Ozіңіz turaly aytyp bersenіz. Shyraq AI-ga dein nemen ainalystynyz? - Men Taraz kalasynanmyn. Kazakh-Turk lyceum. Dal sol zherde zhana narse zhasauga kyzygushylygym oyandy: informatics men robotics olympiadalaryna katystym, al Infomatrix halykaralyk robotics jobalary baykauynda ushіnshi oryn aldym. Sol everywhere IT komegimen kurdeli butter
I understand that it is very interesting. Later, I entered Nazarbayev University to major in Computer Science. Since the third year, I have been working in the field of web development and created Telegram bots. Immediately after graduating from the university, I received an offer to work remotely from a company in Armenia. I worked there as a programmer for about half a year and realized that I don't like working under someone else. Then, together with my classmate, we opened an educational center for students in Taraz. There, children could improve their knowledge of mathematics and English. We invested money to repair the building, but unfortunately, we could not attract enough customers. As a result, the center was closed, and I spent some time paying off my debt. In 2023, when artificial intelligence begins to develop rapidly, I decided to try to work in this direction. I joined the bank as a data scientist. I quickly adapted to the new environment, raised my professional level and realized that many daily processes can be easily automated. As a result, I spent only 2-3 hours a week on work duties and spent the rest of my time studying. — Did the people at the bank know that you work like this? — No, there was no problem.
Since the bank is a large organization, the daily work of one employee is reduced, but it does not affect the overall process. In most cases, employees are engaged in repetitive tasks. I didn't want to waste my time on such work, so I automated it. But I fully fulfilled my main tasks: I analyzed data, collected the necessary information and solved data engineering problems. — Active people who do not stay in one place quickly get bored in the banking industry. Because it takes a long time to implement any change in a large structure. And people want to develop quickly and create a new world. Later, I got a job as a teacher in a private school. In my free time, I took on outsourced projects and helped implement AI-functions through APIs in various applications. After that, I worked for 3-4 months in a good position at FUN&SUN. There I was involved in the introduction of an internal document management system based on artificial intelligence and a corporate RAG-system (RAG — Retrieval-Augmented Generation, i.e. technology that connects AI models with documents or databases). Even though I worked at the school for only one semester, the workload and responsibility of the teacher's work is on the same level as the profession of a doctor
I understood. The work of teachers is not appreciated in Kazakhstan. And in fact, they are spending time and effort to educate someone else's child. At that time, the idea of creating a service to solve the problems of teachers appeared. That's when I met my current partner, Elaman Bauyrzhanuly. We started working on the Shyraq AI project together. — How did you choose a business partner? — We were introduced by a common acquaintance. He told me that he had a very strong sales and marketing professional who wanted to start an IT project and suggested that we join forces. We talked, and since then we have been working successfully for about two years. From the beginning, we separated the tasks: I am responsible for product and technology, and Elaman is in charge of sales and marketing. I would advise all IT professionals who want to turn to business to find a partner who can complement their weaknesses. Because the developers get deep into technical issues, and there is no energy left for sales. And we need an active person who can convey the value of the product, communicate freely with people. That's exactly what happened to us. Moreover, since Elaman had a successful business aimed at teachers, he understood this audience well. — What problem does Shyraq AI solve for teachers? — First of all, straw
facilitates planning and preparation of documents, helps to develop a short-term plan (KMP), author's program, scientific project. We have automated these processes using artificial intelligence and this reduces the time spent on planning by the teacher by about 90%. — Does the teacher need to know how to write prompts for that? - No, and this is a deliberate decision. We've abandoned the ChatGPT logic of "answering only if you ask the right question". In the Shyraq AI system, the teacher just selects the subject, class, language and lesson topic and clicks the "Generate" button. Within 3-5 minutes, he receives a fully prepared short-term plan in the official format required by the Ministry of Education. It includes the learning goal of the curriculum, lesson goal, expected result, five stages of the lesson (organization, main part, confirmation, reflection, homework), evaluation criteria with descriptors, differentiating methods, interdisciplinary connections and values. All this can be downloaded in Word format, printed and submitted to the head of education without any changes. - How do you make sure that the system does not generate random text from the Internet? - We use ready-made templates as well as self-inventing content
We do not use artificial intelligence. We have a hybrid system. All official textbooks in Kazakhstan are preloaded and indexed on the Shyraq AI platform. When a teacher creates a plan, the system uses RAG technology to retrieve tasks and materials from the official textbook of a specific subject, specific grade, and specific language. It can even display page numbers and extract images from assignments. Thanks to this, about 90% of the time is saved. Previously, the teacher spent 1.5-2 hours writing a plan, now it takes 5 minutes. Moreover, the plan is based on an actual textbook, not random information on the Internet. However, the creative contribution of the teacher is still necessary. He should review the plan and make corrections if necessary. For time-poor teachers, we offer ready-made short-term assessment (short-term plan), unit-wide assessment (unit-wide assessment) and term-wise summative assessment (quarterly summative assessment) kits developed by professional methodologists and curators with master's degrees. And if the necessary material is not found, the teacher can create presentations, documents and games himself with the help of AI tools inside the platform. For those who have difficulty using a computer or smartphone, the curators will understand through a video call
lives and teaches. — Apart from lesson plans, what other tools are available in Shyraq AI? - We are currently introducing AI-based educational games and task generation for classes. The teacher only indicates the title of the lesson, the topic, the purpose, the textbook to be used, and what kind of game is needed. If you have special requirements, you can write in the special prompt field. After that, it is enough to press the button - everything will be ready in 3-5 minutes. There are also simulations of physics and chemistry labs and experiments. We are currently developing similar solutions for the subjects of biology, geography and the history of Kazakhstan. This is especially important for schools that do not have the equipment or facilities to conduct real-world experiments. There is also the "Ibray Bot" service adapted to the educational standards of Kazakhstan. It helps you find the right answers quickly. And the "Tulga" service allows you to talk with historical figures. In addition, the presentation designer for the lesson works. One important technological feature is that all material can be downloaded and used without the Internet. This function is especially important for teachers in rural schools where the Internet often fails. — Artificial intelligence
How do you deal with the problem of wrong answers? — No one in the world has yet been able to fully solve this problem. Our observation is that AI is often fabricating information in the humanities, especially regarding ancient literary works whose texts are not available online. In this case, we recommend that teachers take a photo of the desired page of the book and add it as additional context to the request. At the same time, our methodologists check the generated content from time to time, and if necessary, we correct the prompts. In addition, the RAG system allows the artificial intelligence to extract information only from approved school textbooks. However, the most important thing is that the teacher himself checks the material before showing it to the children. — Tell us about your team and technology stack. — Three specialists work in our IT department, including me as CTO. Nevertheless, we are doing the work of several people. In addition, there are ten curators, five marketers and twenty sales managers. At one point, when I combined resources with my partner's second business, the team consisted of 70 people. Among them, 13 people worked in the IT department, including trainees. Technol
As for algorithms, we also use models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic companies. We also tried to train our local LLM-models on GPU servers. But mass application of such solutions turned out to be economically inefficient. Maintaining your own servers requires a huge investment, and when working with the teacher segment, that expense is not justified. Therefore, we now use a combination of different models (some work faster, some are cheaper) depending on the task. We use third-party video generation services to create images of the characters in the "Personality" module. — How does the project make money? — We work with a monthly or annual subscription. The price depends on the tariff: there is a subscription with a classic limit, and there is also a credit system. In it, the user does not have a strict restriction on the functions, but the internal score is taken into account. For example, all credits can be spent on the generation of 200 KMS at once. Now we have switched to the credit system and reduced the price of the basic tariff by half, that is, from 10 thousand to 5 thousand tenge per month. We will see what the demand will be in the new school year. Honestly, if teachers use the limit 100%
nsa, we would go to a big minus. But most use the platform only when they really need it, so the economy balances out. Moreover, the maximum load on the platform is at the beginning of the academic year, and then the activity decreases. Therefore, the overall result is positive. — So, is it possible to make a profit? — There is a profit, but not so big. We worked in the red for about a year and a half. Even now, we lose money in some seasons, but on an annual basis we reach zero or a small plus. However, the project has a social value, it really saves teachers' time. In general, making a lot of money at the expense of teachers is morally questionable. That's why another startup is developing the Xrox platform, which automates communication with the help of chatbots on Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram. There are large clients with a turnover of about a billion tenge, who actively use the system to collect leads. As for Shyraq AI, we want to make the platform as accessible as possible for all teachers in Kazakhstan. So now we are trying to establish contact with the state. - How it works? — Shyraq AI is one of the Ministry of Education in order to avoid additional costs for teachers
We want to buy from the center. Because for some teachers, even a few thousand tenge is a significant expense. Some schools are buying our platform at the request of regional education departments through a state tender. This experience shows that the model can work. — How many teachers use the platform? — Regularly used by about 13 thousand teachers. Out of more than 400,000 teachers in the country, about 155,000 are subscribed to our Instagram page. 65 thousand users are registered in the system, 58.5 thousand of them have tried the demo version, that is, they know its features. We think that we have almost reached the limit of the paying audience of teachers in Kazakhstan. Therefore, the next logical step is to go to the state level. — Was it difficult to convince teachers to sign up at the beginning? — Before we met, Elaman worked with teachers for 1.5 years (helped to pass the certification, helped to prepare author's programs and methodical journals). That experience helped us to immediately understand the real problem of the audience. But we collected the client base from scratch. The hardest part was getting the first positive feedback and building trust. — Which attraction channels are working well now?
what? — Instagram, TikTok and word of mouth. Especially in the last six months, it has been working strongly. This is because teachers are required to learn artificial intelligence tools at the official level. They look for useful services themselves, and if they find them, they recommend them to each other. — What is the advantage of Shyraq AI? Because the teacher can generate even in ChatGPT. In addition, major AI companies are rapidly adding new features to their services. — Our main value is not just content generation. The strength of Shyraq AI is service localization, curation support and adaptation to the country's education standard. We teach educators not only how to use the platform, but how to develop, blog, create media, and stay tech-savvy. Of course, big AI models will develop, and we will develop with them, introducing new features into our product. In my opinion, companies that can retain their client base, provide quality human service and are prone to change will survive any crisis. — How ready are Kazakhstani teachers for the introduction of JI and the creation of interactive material for lessons? - Many teachers still say that someone should do everything for them. That's why our curators have this platform —
it is often necessary to explain that it is not a substitute for the teacher, but a tool that strengthens his creativity. But there are also very active teachers. They quickly learn the system, conduct training seminars in their schools and regions, blog, help their colleagues create KMS and authoring programs, and even work on a commercial basis. We support active ambassadors. We present them with a badge of honor from Shyraq AI partner. — How much was invested in Shyraq AI? Have you invested? — We are developing with our own funds: the partner initially invested about 60 million tenge from his business. We also received loans: last year about 20 million tenge, this year 40 million tenge. We paid off all debt, and the initial investment paid off. — Do you need an investor now? — No, we are not looking for investors. But if we find partners in those regions who will bear the operating and marketing costs, we are open to partnership in the CIS countries through franchise. — Why do you say through a franchise? — So far, we are afraid to enter new markets in order not to weaken our position in Kazakhstan. In history, we overestimated our opportunities during international expansion and collapsed.
many weeks. For us, Shyraq AI is a project that contributes to the development of Kazakhstan. And we will find success in other IT directions. — How do you imagine the project in the future? - In the near future, we are preparing to go to the audience of students, we will offer the first service at the beginning of the new academic year. Now we are adapting the world's best educational practices, including the Singapore methodology, to our system. That's why Shyraq AI will soon feature quality interactive learning modules based on teamwork that students can complete outside of class. In general, we want to build a great educational ecosystem — a super app — that connects teachers, students, and parents. There is even a stationery marketplace that we are running with our partners. I think the next three years will be enough to understand how viable this model is. Madiyar Yergali and Yelaman Bauyrzhanuly have spent the past two years building Shyraq AI, a startup that helps teachers put together lesson plans, games, videos, presentations, and other interactive materials for their classes. As part of Digital Business and Astana Hub's joint project, "100 Startup Stories from Central Eurasia," Madiyar talked about w
hy the team is not looking for investors, whether it is ethical to make money from a tool for teachers, and how they deal with AI hallucinations. — Tell us a bit about yourself. What were you doing before Shyraq AI? — I’m from Taraz and studied at a Kazakh-Turkish lyceum. That’s where I first got into building new things: I took part in computer science and robotics competitions, and came third at Infomatrix, an international robotics project contest. That was when I realized how exciting it can be to solve tough problems with IT. Then I got into Nazarbayev University to study Computer Science, and by my third year I had started working in web development and building Telegram bots. After graduating, I was immediately offered a remote job at a company in Armenia. I worked there as a developer for six months and realized I didn’t like working for someone else. So a classmate and I opened an education center in Taraz, kind of an after-school program where students could improve their math and English. We invested in renovating the place, but unfortunately we couldn’t attract enough clients. We had to close the center, and I spent a long time paying off the debts afterward. In 2023, w
hen the AI boom kicked off, I decided to try my hand in that space and got a job as a data scientist at a bank. I picked things up quickly, moved up a level, and realized that a lot of routine tasks were pretty easy to automate. In the end, I was only spending two or three hours a week on actual work, and used the rest of the time to keep learning. — Did the bank know you were working that way? — No, but it wasn’t really a problem. A bank is a huge machine, and it keeps running steadily even if some individual employees aren’t super involved. A lot of specialists just handle the routine tasks in their area, but I didn’t want to spend my time doing that. So I automated my work, while still getting everything done: analytics, data collection, and data engineering tasks. — Why did you leave the bank? — Active people tend to get bored pretty quickly in banking, because in a big organization, every change takes forever to get approved. I wanted to grow faster and build something new. I left to teach at a private school, and in my free time I took on outsourced projects, helping companies add AI features to their apps through APIs. Later, I spent three or four months in a solid role at F
UN&SUN, where I worked on an internal AI-powered document management system and a corporate RAG system. RAG stands for Retrieval-Augmented Generation, a technology that connects AI models to a company’s documents or data. Even though I only spent one semester working at the school, it made me realize that teaching is just as demanding and carries just as much responsibility as being a doctor. In Kazakhstan, teachers still don’t get the recognition they deserve, even though they pour their time and energy into helping other people’s children grow. That’s when the idea came up: why not build a service that helps solve teachers’ problems? Around that time, I met my current partner, Yelaman Bauyrzhanuly, and we started building Shyraq AI together. — How did you choose your business partner? — A mutual friend introduced us. He told me he knew a great sales and marketing person who wanted to launch an IT project, and suggested we team up. We had a chat, and now we’ve been working together successfully for almost two years.We split the responsibilities right from the start: I’m in charge of the product and tech, while Yelaman handles sales and marketing. My advice to any IT specialist who
wants to move into business is to find a partner who balances out your weak spots. Developers tend to get so deep into the technical side that they don’t have much energy left for sales. And for that, you need someone energetic, someone who’s good with people and knows how to explain the value of the product. That’s exactly what happened with us. Plus, Yelaman had already run a successful business for teachers, so he understood this audience really well. — What problem does Shyraq AI solve for teachers? — First and foremost, it helps with lesson planning and paperwork: things like short-term lesson plans, original teaching programs, and research projects. We used AI to automate those processes, cutting the time teachers used to spend on planning by around 90%. — Does a teacher need to know how to write prompts for that? – No, and that’s a big part of the idea. We deliberately moved away from the “plain ChatGPT” approach, where you need to know how to phrase a prompt properly. In Shyraq AI, a teacher just selects the subject, grade, language, and lesson topic from drop-down menus, then hits “Generate.” Three to five minutes later, they get a complete short-term lesson plan in the e
xact official format required by the Ministry of Education. It includes the learning objectives from the curriculum, the lesson objective, expected outcomes by level, all five stages of the lesson, assessment criteria with descriptors, differentiation, cross-curricular links, and values. Then they can export it straight to Word, print it out, and hand it in to the head teacher without changing a thing. – How do you make sure the system isn’t just pulling random text from the internet? – We don’t use fixed templates from a database, and we don’t rely on “raw” AI that just makes things up. Our system is a hybrid. Shyraq AI has Kazakhstan’s official textbooks uploaded and indexed in advance, broken down by subject, grade, and language. So when a teacher generates a lesson plan, the system uses RAG technology to pull real tasks and materials from the official textbook, with page numbers included, and it can even bring in images of the exercises. That’s where the roughly 90% time saving comes from. Before, a teacher might spend an hour and a half or two hours putting together a lesson plan. Now it takes about five minutes, and the plan is based on a real textbook, not generic filler fro
m the internet. Of course, the teacher’s own input still matters. They should read through the plan and make any edits if needed. For teachers who have no time at all, we offer ready-made sets of short-term lesson plans, end-of-unit assessments, and end-of-quarter assessments. They were put together by professional methodologists and curators with master’s degrees. And if a teacher needs something beyond the ready-made materials, they can use the AI tools inside the platform to generate presentations, documents, and games themselves. If they have trouble using a computer or smartphone, our curators hop on a video call and show them how everything works. — What other tools does Shyraq AI offer besides lesson plans? – We’re adding more interactive features, like AI-powered educational games and activities teachers can use in class. Here’s how it works: the teacher just enters the lesson title and topic, selects the goals and textbook, and chooses the game they want the AI to create for that specific lesson. There’s also a prompt field in case they want to customize anything. Then they just hit the button, and everything is ready in three to five minutes. We also have simulations for
lab work and experiments in physics and chemistry. Now we’re building similar tools for biology, geography, and Kazakhstan history. This is especially important for schools that don’t have the resources or equipment to do real experiments. We also have Ybyrai Bot, which is optimized for Kazakhstan’s education standards and helps teachers quickly find accurate answers, Túlğa, a service where students can talk to famous historical figures, and a presentation builder for lessons. One really important feature is that teachers can download all the materials and use them offline. That’s especially helpful for teachers in rural schools, where internet access can be unreliable. — How do you deal with AI hallucinations? — No one in the world has fully solved that problem yet. From what we’ve seen, AI is most likely to make things up in humanities subjects, especially when it’s dealing with older literary works whose texts aren’t available online. In those cases, we recommend that teachers take photos of the relevant pages from the book and attach them to the request as context. Our methodologists also review the generated content from time to time, and we adjust the prompts when needed. The
RAG system helps too, because it lets the AI pull information strictly from approved school textbooks. But the most important thing is that teachers personally review the content before showing it to students. — Tell us about your team and the tech stack you use. —.Our IT department is made up of three people, including me as CTO, but we do the kind of workload you’d normally expect from a team of ten. We also have around ten curator-methodologists, five marketers, and 20 sales managers. At our peak, when we pooled resources with my partner’s other business, we had 70 people on the team, including 13 in IT together with the interns. On the tech side, we use a mix of models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. We tried training our own local LLMs on GPU servers, but for mass use, it just doesn’t make financial sense. Maintaining our own servers would require a huge investment, and it wouldn’t pay off when working with teachers. So now we combine different models depending on the task: some are faster, others are cheaper. We also use third-party services to generate character videos for the Túlğa module. — How does the project make money? — We use a subscription model, either monthly
or yearly. The price depends on the plan: there’s a standard limited subscription, and there’s also a credit-based option where users aren’t tied to strict feature limits but spend internal credits instead. For example, someone could use all their credits to generate 200 short-term lesson plans at once. We’ve now switched to the credit system and cut the price of the basic plan in half, from 10,000 to 5,000 tenge a month. We’ll see what demand looks like in the new school year. Honestly, if teachers used their limits to the fullest, we’d be running at a serious loss. But most of them use the platform only when they actually need it, which helps the unit economics balance out. Plus, usage peaks at the start of the school year and then drops off, so overall we still come out ahead. — Are you actually making money from it? — We are making a profit, but it’s not huge. For about a year and a half, we were operating at a loss. Even now, during the low season, we sometimes dip into the red, but on average over the year, we break even or make a small profit. Still, the project has real social value because it genuinely helps teachers save time. In general, making big money off teachers fe
els morally questionable. That’s why we’re also building another startup in parallel, Xrox, a platform for automating communication on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram through chatbots. We already have major clients with turnover of around one billion tenge who actively use the system to generate leads. As for Shyraq AI, we’d like to make the platform as accessible as possible for teachers across Kazakhstan. That’s why we’re now trying to build relationships with the government. — We want the Ministry of Education to buy the system centrally for teachers, so they don’t have to pay for Shyraq AI out of their own pockets. For many teachers, even a few thousand tenge a month is a real expense. Some schools are already buying access to our platform through government tenders, at the request of regional education departments. That experience shows the model can work. — How many teachers are using the platform? — Around 13,000 use it regularly. Out of more than 400,000 teachers in the country, about 155,000 follow us on Instagram. We have 65,000 registered users in the system, and 58,500 of them have tried the demo version, so they already know what the platform can do. And we feel like
we’ve more or less reached the ceiling of the paying teacher audience in Kazakhstan. So the next logical step is to move to the government level. — How hard was it to get teachers to pay for a subscription in the beginning? — Yelaman had already been working with teachers for a year and a half before we met, helping them pass certification and write original teaching programs and professional development journals. So his experience gave us a strong start: we understood the audience’s pain points right away. But we still had to build the customer base from scratch, and the hardest part at the beginning was getting the first positive reviews and earning people’s trust. — What customer acquisition channels work best for you right now? — Instagram, TikTok, and word of mouth. Over the past six months, word of mouth has really taken off because teachers have been officially required to learn AI tools. So they’re actively looking for useful services, and when they find one, they recommend it to each other. — What makes Shyraq AI different, given that teachers can just generate things in ChatGPT themselves? Especially now that the AI giants are quickly adding new features directly into th
eir own products. — Our main value isn’t just generating content in exchange for tokens. Shyraq AI’s real strengths are that it’s local, it comes with hands-on support, and it’s adapted to the teaching standards of a specific country. We help teachers do more than just use our platform. We help them grow, run blogs, create media, and keep up with technological progress. Of course, the big AI models will keep evolving, and we’ll keep evolving with them by building their new capabilities into our product. I think companies that know how to hold on to their customers, provide great human support, and adapt to change can get through any crisis. — How ready are teachers in Kazakhstan to use AI and create interactive materials for their lessons? — Many teachers still want everything done for them. So our curators often have to explain that the platform is a tool for their own creativity, not a full replacement for the teacher. But there are also some really proactive teachers who picked up the system quickly. They started running training sessions in their schools and regions, launched their own blogs, and now help other teachers put together short-term lesson plans and original teaching
programs as a paid service. We reward the most active ambassadors of our service by giving them honorary Shyraq AI partner badges. — How much have you invested in Shyraq AI? Have you raised any funding? — We’ve been building the company with our own money. In the beginning, my partner put in around 60 million tenge from his other business. We also took out loans: about 20 million tenge last year and around 40 million tenge this year. We’ve paid all of that off now, and the original investment has already paid for itself. — Do you need an investor now? — No, we’re not looking for investors. But we’re open to partnerships if we expand into CIS markets through a franchise model, as long as we find partners who are ready to cover the operating and marketing costs in those regions. — Why a franchise model specifically? — For now, we’re hesitant to enter new markets on our own because we don’t want to weaken our position in Kazakhstan. There are plenty of examples of startups that overestimated their capacity during international expansion and ended up failing. For us, Shyraq AI is a project that lets us contribute to Kazakhstan’s development. We make money through other IT ventures. —
Where do you see the project in the long run? — We’re getting ready to expand to students, and we’ll be launching the first services at the start of the school year. Right now, we’re actively adapting some of the world’s best teaching practices to our education system, including Singaporean methods built around teamwork. So soon, Shyraq AI will offer high-quality interactive learning modules that children in Kazakhstan can use outside the classroom. More broadly, we’d like to build a full education ecosystem: a super app that brings together teachers, students, and parents. It could even go as far as a marketplace for school supplies, which we could launch with partners. I think the next three years will be enough to see whether this model really works.
