What Business Can Be Opened in Kazakhstan in 2024?

Firstly, the country offers comfortable conditions for entrepreneurs. For example, individual entrepreneurs (IE) without hired employees operating under a simplified scheme pay 3% of their earnings twice a year, income and social taxes, and also make monthly mandatory payments for their benefit: pension contributions, social security contributions, and health insurance payments. Under the generally established regime, the corporate tax rate is 10%. At the same time, individuals can also register as self-employed, which is a popular option for tutors, nannies, photographers, farmers, and others. The self-employed pay a single aggregate payment of 0.5 or 1 MCI depending on their place of residence (1 MCI for residents of cities of republican significance, 0.5 MCI for other localities).

Secondly, Kazakhstan is part of the CIS and the Eurasian Economic Union, making it an attractive location for entrepreneurs from Russia and Belarus. Advantages include:

• possibility to reside in the country and work without a visa;
• no language barrier;
• soft tax regime (e.g., VAT in Kazakhstan is 12%, compared to 20% in Russia and 25% in Belarus).

Thirdly, the country is rapidly advancing in digitalization, which simplifies many business processes for entrepreneurs. For example, today, registering a legal entity can be done online without leaving the office, it is enough to have a computer with internet access.

We offer a selection of interesting business ideas and popular areas to start a business with minimal investment in 2024.

Food Service: Takeaway Coffee

Statistics show that every third person in the world gets takeaway coffee at least once a day. Kazakhstanis are no exception: more than 10 million kg of coffee are consumed annually in the country. Moreover, takeaway coffee has already become a cultural pattern, symbolizing a person's lifestyle and status.

This makes takeaway coffee the most relevant business in 2024. It tops the list of business ideas for 2024. However, for a mini-coffee shop to be really profitable, it must be located in the right place: ideally, if it is located in or near an office building. According to current estimates, almost every office worker drinks at least two cups of coffee a day. The benefits are obvious.

There are two major expenses in this business - rent and purchasing a coffee machine. The smallest space can be rented since the takeaway format doesn't require tables for visitors. A professional coffee machine can cost up to KZT 2 million, but to start a 2024 business idea with minimal investment, one can opt for a cheaper model costing around KZT 300 thousand.

Over time, the mini-business idea can be transformed into something larger. For instance, you can expand and start offering desserts such as donuts, cakes, and waffles. This would require finding a reliable supplier and purchasing refrigeration equipment for storage and display. The next step could be growing the mini-business into a full-fledged coffee shop.

Education: Online Tutoring

This is an optimal solution for those looking for business ideas without investment in 2024. Since classes are conducted online, there's no need to rent a space or set up a workspace for the student. Overall, expenses include only Internet fees and purchasing relevant teaching materials.

What to teach? Undoubtedly, teachers with a background in foreign languages are at an advantage. You can teach schoolchildren, students, and even adults. Foreign language teaching is not seasonal: it can continue year-round, even during summer vacations.

Another in-demand business idea from scratch for 2024 is online tutoring for schoolchildren in the subjects that will be on final or entrance exams (Kazakh and English languages, Kazakhstan history, algebra, etc.). Traditional difficult subjects like chemistry, physics, biology, and geometry also remain popular and in demand.

Notably, an entrepreneur can eventually scale their online lessons into a full-fledged online school. We recommend you to take note of this highly promising and fast-payback business direction with minimal costs, confidently ranking among the top “home business ideas”.

Construction Services: Apartment Renovations

In 2022 alone, over 12 million square meters of housing were commissioned in Kazakhstan. Some of these apartments and houses need finishing work. Additionally, renovations are done in the secondary market apartments. Since not everyone can safely and efficiently handle electrical work or plaster walls, most often specialists are hired for these works.

This is one of the simplest and most profitable businesses in 2024. It's simple because there's no need to rent an office, and specialists in this field usually already have the necessary skills (and most likely the required equipment). It's profitable because even the most basic designer renovation of an apartment in Kazakhstan costs around KZT 10 million, this amount is made up of the cost of materials and labor.

Specialists with a background in design will also benefit, as this direction is very popular now. This knowledge will allow to provide full-cycle services — from idea to implementation.

Moreover, construction and renovation services can be provided more locally. One of the popular ideas for self-employment is the "handyman" service for specialists who can handle home tasks: from hanging shelves or installing doors to tiling bathrooms.

Rental: Construction Tool Rental

A common situation: you spent money on a professional drill or screwdriver. With the help of this equipment you effectively solved the tasks, and now it just sits idle, often this happens after a major renovation. But you can offer it for rent! This is another popular 2024 business idea with minimal investment. Statistics show that a person uses a drill for no more than 13 minutes over its lifetime. Offer potential clients the chance to rent your equipment for a reasonable fee instead of buying it for hundreds of thousands of tenge. The minimal investment is for placing ads on websites offering handyman services and equipment rentals.

Moreover, this idea has a significant ecological potential, which you can be involved in: if people don’t buy unnecessary equipment, their “waste footprint” is reduced.

Green Business: From Sales to Recycling

Continuing with the theme of rational resource use, more and more people are thinking about how to make their lives more eco-friendly. Hence, there's a demand for products and services that have the “eco-” prefix. What are the most popular business ideas in this segment? You can sell vegetables from your garden, sew reusable shopping bags, provide eco-cleaning services (using only eco-friendly products), produce organic cosmetics, make wooden toys, and more. There are also relatively new ideas for small business: for example, organizing eco-tours or making vegan soap.

An interesting business idea could be collecting and recycling organic waste — an excellent solution for farmers needing compost. City dwellers discard tons of organic waste (food scraps, vegetable and fruit peels, etc.) that lies in garbage bags in landfills for years. Organic waste emits landfill gas, including methane. Methane accumulations cause explosions and fires in landfills, and its greenhouse effect is 24 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.

The business idea is simple: a farmer collects organic waste from clients using own vehicle for a small fee. The client contributes to the environment and gets rid of many problems (organic waste smells unpleasant and attracts flies if not taken out on time). The farmer, in addition to a small organic waste collection fee, gets the “basis” for future compost, which can also be sold to gardeners and farmers.

This idea can easily be classified as a “business for 300 thousand”, as it only involves fuel costs for a car.

Sales: Children's Goods Store

What business can a woman start? One of the options is an online or offline children's goods store. This niche attracts women entrepreneurs because they perfectly understand the needs of other moms, can share their experiences, and know exactly what makes the baby's life more comfortable.

What to sell? This can include clothes, custom toys, accessories, and early development kits (e.g., Velcro books, fold-out books, etc.).

This business can be quite profitable in 2024 for several reasons. Firstly, 93.5 thousand children were born in Kazakhstan in the first three months of the year alone. Secondly, children are growing rapidly, so they constantly need new items for life and entertainment — clothes, shoes, toys, furniture, etc. Thus, demand for these products is stable. Additionally, such a business pays off quickly — within six months.

If you want to save money, consider starting your online store. However, keep in mind that even if you don’t need to rent retail space, you must account for courier service expenses, an order processing and shipping specialist, and warehouse space if selling large items. Initially, you might handle order processing and shipping yourself and store products at home, but as the business scales, you'll need extra hands and storage space.

Courier Service: Water Delivery

Bottled water for coolers is in high demand not only for offices, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals but also for apartments. However, carrying a 19-liter bottle to a cetain floor in a multi-story building is challenging. Therefore, a relevant business idea in the service sector for 2024 is water delivery. This business can start with less than KZT 200 thousand: if you have a personal car, you only need to cover fuel costs. Over time, you can easily expand your business by hiring drivers and movers and increasing the number of cars.

Tourism: Unique Routes

In recent years, author’s tours around Kazakhstan have been gaining popularity. They feature interesting locations, full guide support, and non-standard routes. For example, trekking in the Tian Shan mountains, safaris in Altyn-Emel National Park, and expeditions to the Mangystau Peninsula are popular. Short tour formats like weekend tours are also in demand.

Another interesting direction is psychological tourism and so-called retreats. These are new business ideas for psychologists who love travelling. The purpose of psychological tourism is to change the environment, take a break from daily routine, and relax. This direction is popular among companies that care about their employees' mental health and try to prevent burnout. In such tours, people not only follow a route and enjoy nature, but also attend consultations or group therapy sessions that help them relax and reduce anxiety. Other popular activities include workshops, yoga, meditation, etc.

This is a profitable business in 2024, but it requires significant investment: selecting locations for stops and events, renting facilities, providing food and necessary equipment for tourists, and other intangible and material costs.

Sports: Online Fitness

A great idea for home business is to conduct online workouts. Before 2020, this format was not a success, but Covid times have changed priorities and many areas of business have gone online.

This online business idea is quite simple: a trainer calls a client through a convenient video link application and controls how the client performs the desired set of exercises, including monitoring the technique, adjusting the load. Before online training, a consultation is held, where the client specifies what goal he/she wants to achieve, and the trainer draws up a program, recommends what equipment to buy. Costs may include only the payment for stable Internet and a video communication software plan, which is not limited in time.

Cleaning: Cleaning and Dry Cleaning

Today, cleaning is one of the most profitable options for small businesses. And the specialists of this sphere can provide different types of services: it can be regular, maintenance or overall cleaning, cleaning after renovation and others. The cleaner comes to a client with their own equipment, consumables and cleaning agents - you will have to spend money on this.

Another useful service is dry cleaning of furniture and carpets. It provides that the specialist performs everything at the client's home - it greatly saves the customer's time. However, you will need professional equipment and cleaning compounds, personal car, which is convenient for transporting all of this.

So what kind of business is profitable to open in Kazakhstan in 2024? There are many opportunities and promising directions. Business ideas for beginners can be any: from walking pets and decorating holidays, to making cakes and sewing clothes for dogs. And you can choose a lot of ideas for business “without leaving your home”, for example, those directions that perfectly suit women on maternity leave or professionals to whom free schedule is important.

To sum up, what do you need to do to start your business successfully? Firstly, take into account your competencies, assess your strengths, resources and capabilities. Secondly, explore the market and think through a detailed business plan. And, finally, choose the right partner bank to solve financial issues, because, first of all, you will need to open a convenient and favorable current account for mutual settlements with clients. And this can be done in Bank CenterCredit, including online. We cooperate with individual entrepreneurs and legal entities, we offer businessmen favorable conditions for cash and settlement services for various forms and activities. Moreover, our bank provides a number of additional services: lending, collection, leasing and much more, and it takes no more than 30 minutes for our customers to make settlements with counterparties. A convenient Internet banking system and mobile app will allow you to tackle any business tasks in the shortest possible time, without leaving your home or office, and will facilitate making your business successful.

Open an account for your victories!