Editorial beat
Markets
Platforms, retail, brands, and economic signals revealed through the behavior of buyers.
The Marketplace Is Dead. It Will Call You
How Timur Turlov's Freedom is buying a marketplace that stopped paying people, why the holding is resurrecting it under its own name — and why Kaspi, for the first time in a decade, faces a challenger with real ammunition.
The State Closed the Statistics. The Market Opened a Jerrycan.
Russia's fuel shortage can't be announced — but it can be counted. How sales of empty jerrycans on Wildberries became the crisis barometer once the official numbers went dark.
Latest in Markets
Lazy Arithmetic: How AI Mines Gold Out of Kaspi
An MCP connector for Kaspi — Kazakhstan's dominant marketplace: Claude pulls niches, prices, and the “no-brand” share on its own.
Lick Beauty: Seven Million Followers vs. 420 Tenge
How a brand with 7 million followers lost to a knockoff that sells for under a dollar.
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New investigations and data notes from Kazakhstan and Central Asia.