"We are an excavator. Can we dig a trench? We can, but we will break everything there." Kyivstar President on plans to acquire an insurance and marketplace, abandon EdTech and develop AI infrastructure
Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov told the podcast «Closed the Round» where the group is looking next in its M&A strategy, why it is still bypassing EdTech, why it is skeptical of attempts to repeat Kazakhstan’s Kaspi — and at the same time has an ambitious vision for the company’s role in the future AI infrastructure for the defense sector.
Kyivstar President Oleksandr Komarov told the podcast «Closed the Round» where the group is looking next in its M&A strategy, why it is still bypassing EdTech, why it is skeptical of attempts to repeat Kazakhstan’s Kaspi — and at the same time has an ambitious vision for the company’s role in the future AI infrastructure for the defense sector.
Where Kyivstar Group is looking next
Komarov confirmed that the group is in talks to acquire an online insurance company, which should complement the digital health ecosystem around Helsi. He described the vision of the «last mile» of the customer journey: «This is some kind of teleconsultation that I want to receive here and now. This may be, one day, the delivery of medicines under the SOS button, so that any medicine will be brought to me within an hour,» Komarov explains. A pilot example of this approach already exists in Pakistan, where the group is developing a digital insurance business based on the resale of insurance products.
The second active direction is marketplaces and classifieds. Komarov confirmed that the team has already met at a high level with one of the players in this market («green», as he puts it) to discuss a possible acquisition. At the same time, he immediately warns about the economics of such a deal: «Any e-commerce is a fairly low-margin business. This is a big question. Even from the eyes of an investor. If we say that we are adding a billion with a margin of 3-5% to a business that generates a billion with a margin of 50+, then this is a different business,» he reflects.
Why not EdTech?
According to Komarov, the company has been interested in the education sector for a long time, but no deal has ever been made. «Almost nothing suits me,» he admits. According to his observation, «when you look at this sector from the outside, it is incredibly large, but also incredibly segmented» — hundreds of small players, each too small for Kyivstar Group.
Adding to the complexity is the fact that the state is actively working in the sector through Mriya, which has the leverage of state development and takes part of the digital customer experience. He formulated his philosophy regarding narrow segments figuratively: «We need to dig a small trench — and, perhaps, it is better to dig it with a shovel. We are an excavator. Can we dig a trench? We can, but we will break everything there.»
Skepticism about the «Church of Superapes»
When asked about the wave of attempts to build «our own Kaspi» in Ukraine, Komarov responded sharply: he personally saw how Kaspi was created in Kazakhstan, and the presentations of consultants who show this path to other companies, according to him, «do not correspond to reality at all.»
«I am very skeptical about these attempts to replicate Kaspi. I saw Kaspi being created personally,» he says, adding that even attempts to replicate the model in a new context — including hiring top managers directly from a Kazakh company — are not working very well so far: «Few will succeed.»
Komarov admitted that he does not like the word «ecosystem» itself: «I do not like the word ecosystem, because it is an incredible level of responsibility.» According to him, Kyivstar Group is deliberately building not one large ecosystem, but several specialized ones — in digital health, modern mobility, and entertainment — which may prove to be more valuable to an investor separately than as a single, difficult-to-understand conglomerate.
AI infrastructure for sovereign miltech
Finally, Komarov shared a strategic vision for Kyivstar’s role in building infrastructure for artificial intelligence. «We are actually an incredibly large infrastructure player. We have infrastructure all over the country,» he says, referring to data centers in every regional center.
According to him, the company is looking at how to enter the cloud business not for the sake of the cloud business itself, but to «build the largest service and infrastructure provider in the future world of artificial intelligence.»
The key argument is the issue of sovereignty: «This is just a question of war. And after the war, the issue of sovereignty… conditionally, the entire Miltech should be calculated in Ukraine,» Komarov is convinced. This is where, according to him, his personal efforts are currently focused.
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