Uzum wraps Telegram chat commerce

Telegram matters because it keeps a large share of Uzbek commerce informal, which means Uzum is not only fighting other marketplaces, it is trying to pull sellers out of chat based selling into a fee paying system. That is why seller tools matter so much. FBS and DBS let merchants keep their own inventory and even their own delivery, so the main change is getting demand, payments, ads, and order management from Uzum without fully rebuilding how they already operate.

• This is a distribution problem before it is a logistics problem. Uzbekistan had 32.7 million internet users in early 2025, and internal research notes that more than 70% of the population uses Telegram, so many small merchants already reach buyers where they spend time each day, inside channels and chats.
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• Uzum has been adapting the marketplace to that reality. It added FBS in October 2024 so sellers can hold stock in their own warehouse and hand parcels to Uzum later, then added DBS in May 2025 so sellers can store, pack, and deliver themselves while paying only sales commission and no logistics fee.
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• The closest analogue is social commerce in markets where small sellers start on low cost social surfaces and only graduate to marketplaces when the platform adds clear incremental volume and tools. Uzum Business is built around that step up, combining storefront, logistics, payments, financing, ad tools, and intake points in bazaars for merchants coming from offline or Telegram workflows.
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The next phase is formalization without forcing behavioral change. The winning model is likely to look less like replacing Telegram and more like wrapping it, giving merchants better checkout, fulfillment choices, credit, and promotion while preserving the lightweight operating habits that made chat commerce work in the first place.