Head of Orbis Auto: China came to the Kazakh car market on time
Orbis Auto, the automotive division of the Orbis Kazakhstan group of companies, has been one of the leading players in the Kazakhstani automotive retail industry for several years.
The company's portfolio, which has 10 distribution contracts, includes 15 global automotive brands, and its dealer network includes 59 centers located in 12 cities across the country. Two years ago, the company celebrated its 10th anniversary, and this year has become an anniversary year for 42-year-old Dinara Iskakova, CEO of Orbis Auto. 20 years ago, she joined the automotive business – and linked her career and life with it.
A high school student from the city of Sarqand (in the current Zhetysu region) dreamed of a career in politics and, after graduating from high school, entered the Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science of the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. In early 2004, Dinara decided that it was time to look for a job, even if it was not yet related to the future specialty of a political scientist, and got a job as a specialist at the «Toyota Zhetysu Center», one of the two dealerships of the Japanese brand operating in Almaty at that time.
An unfeminine affair
The young employee, whose official duties consisted mainly of meeting visitors, nevertheless managed not only to provide the client with general information, but also to …sell the car. «After a year and a half of working at the dealership's reception, I realized that I no longer wanted to connect my professional life with politics. I was seriously interested in the car business, I did a good job of my duties, and I was «passionate» about automotive topics: I read reviews, and thick booklets with all the characteristics of cars became my desktop books. By the way, I also met my future spouse at work, so the auto business – is a part of my life, and I've had a special relationship with the Toyota brand ever since», – says the interviewee.
Noting the success of the girl, the management transferred her to the position of sales manager, and Dinara became the first female salesperson in the history of the dealership. In those years, there were still widespread stereotypes that selling cars was – not a woman's business, and some buyers strongly demanded to invite a male seller. Dinara was not offended, but offered to tell a little about the car until a colleague was released. Picky buyers agreed and soon realized that they didn't need another consultant, and… then they brought their friends and relatives to her to buy a car.
At that time, the sales department division was headed by Farrukh Makhmudov, founder and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Orbis Group of companies (No. 23 in the Forbes Kazakhstan ranking of the richest businessmen).
«We have been working together for 20 years. It's no exaggeration to say that he became a mentor from whom I learned a lot, I continue to learn to this day, and I am very grateful to him for this», – Iskakova emphasizes.
Her passion for her profession brought results: if, on average, each manager sold seven cars per month, then she –was 37! At the age of 25, she headed the sales department of «Toyota Center Zhetysu» at the «Nurly-Tau», Almaty business center, – and then at the main dealership. In 2010, Dinara moved to «Avtodom» – the first company of Orbis Kazakhstan Group, to the position of head of Corporate Sales department. «Avtodom» provides rental vehicles for oil and gas companies, they used the services of the Toyota brand. Thus, in addition to the knowledge and skills acquired in the auto retail industry, Dinara's experience in working with corporate clients and tenders has been added to her piggy bank.
«We can say that all my professional experience concerns the automotive business, and I know absolutely all the processes inside it, because I myself went from a reception employee to a dealership director. This makes management very easy. In addition, I have always been a playing coach: as the director of dealerships, I sold cars myself, and I still communicate with my first customers who came to me 18–20 years ago, I recommend which car to choose», – says Iskakova.
Toyota and others
In 2012, a Toyota dealership was opened in Kostanay, from which the history of Orbis Auto began. By that time, two dealerships of the brand, which was popular among Kazakhstani car enthusiasts, were already operating in Almaty, and one center was operating in Astana, so the market dictated the decision to enter the regions.
«Toyota has announced a tender for a dealer position in Kostanay, and since we knew this brand better than any other player and really wanted to work with it, we took part in the tender – and won. I became the director of the center and moved north with my family. According to the results of the first year of operation, Kostanay DC received the ICHIBAN award as the best Toyota dealership in the country, in the entire history of our company we have received this award 10 times», – says Iskakova. She returned to Almaty a year and a half later to head a new dealership «Toyota City».
As the years went by, new brands appeared in the Orbis portfolio, including Nissan, Hyundai, Cadillac. In 2018, it was decided to create the Orbis Auto group, under the management of which were to be all the companies included in the automotive business within Orbis Kazakhstan, and Dinara headed the new structure. At the same time, the group, which had been working as a dealer until then, began to develop distribution activities.
After the purchase of Mercur Auto in 2019, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche joined the list of partner brands, and Orbis Auto entered the luxury segment. In many ways, it was a challenge: the premium segment, which has consistently accounted for 3.5% – 4.7% of the total market in recent years, is quite conservative. Customers here are more demanding than in the mass segment, more sensitive to the quality of service and maintenance, so companies need to constantly improve business processes, add new and creative «chips».
Over time, an industrial direction has emerged in the orbit of the Orbis Group's activities. In the summer of 2022, a multi-brand factory for the production of special equipment Orbis Heavy Machinery was opened in Astana. At the first stage, a small-scale assembly of a low-tonnage Kia Bongo truck was set up here. This year, construction of a full-cycle plant began in the Industrial Zone of Almaty, where it is planned to carry out small-scale assembly of Exeed and KAIYI brand cars, the launch of the enterprise is scheduled for the first quarter of 2026..
«The capacity of the plant is large, and during the construction and launch process we will work with our partners to fill the enterprise with new brands depending on demand», – comments Iskakova.
In turn, when choosing a partner for strong>Orbis Auto, the brand's position in the market, the prospect of further growth, the quality and competitiveness of its products, and the warranty policy are of fundamental importance. The automotive business is designed for a long time, and a brand representative in the country must be confident in its stability and reliability.
The company evaluated all these criteria when Chinese brands were actively entering Kazakhstan, looking for partners in the person of major players. Today, the automotive group represents brands on the market Geely, Exeed, ZEEKR and KAIYI, within the Orbis Auto portfolio for the first six months of 2024, the share of sales of Chinese automotive products amounted to 49%.
«We understood perfectly well that the modern Chinese car industry has come for a long time and now it is completely different from what it was before. To be honest, when I visit automobile factories in China, I still can't stop being surprised by their development. We can say that China entered the Kazakh market on time: at that time, we were faced with a shortage of cars, and we were rebuilding logistics chains after February 2022 (Russia's invasion of Ukraine – Editor's note). But our company has never considered cooperation with companies from China as a necessary measure. We understood that this was a prospect for the future and either we would take these brands or lose our share», – Iskakova explains.
Learn a lesson
The crises of recent years have taught lessons to both the global car business and the Kazakhstani – however, in 20 years in the industry, the director of Orbis Auto can hardly recall calm times. During the pandemic, many processes had to be moved online. Digital-departments were created at the company's dealerships, whose employees sold cars remotely, signed up customers for service, performed preliminary diagnostics and calculated the approximate cost of repairs, and approved loan applications. The new tools proved to be in demand even after the removal of covid restrictions: the share of sales through digital departments today is 30%, and 20% of customers prefer to sign up for the service not by phone or directly at the car center, but through social networks and messengers.
The war in Ukraine has turned into other challenges for the market – the revision of contracts for brands that had previously been handled through Russia, the need to build new logistics chains, rising costs and longer delivery times. The new logistics routes, Iskakova explains, were not ready to let the increased number of cars through, and there were not enough resources from the temporary storage warehouse and transport companies. All this could not but affect the price level. But not all the changes turned out to be with a «minus» sign. In particular, it was possible to compensate for the shortage of cars and expand the model range from four or five models to 11 for the Audi brand, which this year entered the top three premium brands in sales in Kazakhstan. The range of configurations has increased within one model. This was largely due to the fact that Kazakhstan received some of the models intended for the Russian market, but also due to the fact that the Kazakh market itself gained a more significant status in the eyes of the manufacturer.
«The situation is now leveling off. Some of the contracts that we used to have were dealer contracts, now they are in the distribution category. Prices for cars that are driven from afar will not return to their previous level, but many problems are being solved, the market is adapting to such an extent that many domestic companies have appeared providing new types of services at lower prices than before, in particular, in the field of logistics. This trend emerged at the end of last year and remains relevant this year.», – Iskakova comments.
After coming out of the deficit in 2023, automotive retail showed an unprecedented 60 percent sales growth. According to the interviewee, in many ways this growth was artificial, there was no particular benefit for companies, but there was no choice. The car business players, who have been accustomed to shortages for three years, have ordered a sufficient number of cars. Plus, cars designed for the Russian market have been sent to Kazakhstan, and Chinese brands have made themselves known, many of which are represented in the sought-after economy segment. The latter means moving to the primary market for customers who previously bought cars on the «secondary» market. The presence of a large stock, Iskakova explains, is bad for the car business, and dealers were forced to offer attractive purchase programs to customers in order to pass through a large volume of cars that came to the country.
«The Kazakh market has not seen such dumping for a long time as at the beginning of last year, and we stimulated autumn sales by offering customers to buy a car on terms that are difficult to refuse. In my opinion, there will be no more growth like last year. The market will naturally increase by 5–15% per year. Yes, our enterprises will start producing cars of Chinese brands, accordingly, prices will decrease, and some of the buyers, especially in the economy segment, who used to buy used cars, will switch to new ones. But there is a market capacity and a number of solvent population, and these are the factors that we will not get away from.», – the interlocutor is sure.
A look through time
Speaking about effective demand, the CEO of Orbis Auto notes that not only the market is changing, but also the buyer. The audience is getting younger, and millennials and zoomers are joining the ranks of drivers, perceiving the car as a second gadget, attaching more importance to the technological «stuffing» of their car, the pleasure of driving it, and less importance – to the country of manufacture. If at one time Korean brands new to Kazakhstanis were viewed with distrust by the market for a long time, then Chinese cars were accepted quickly enough. Even when choosing the color of their cars, Kazakhstanis are increasingly abandoning classic black and white in favor of non-standard bright colors – although this trend is more typical for large cities than for small settlements. The period of car ownership is shortened. Previously, it was five years or more, but now it ranges – from one to three years. If we consider that the same Chinese manufacturers stipulate a five- to seven-year warranty period for their cars, then the buyer can upgrade the car before the warranty expires. By the way, the importance of after-sales service and the availability of high-quality official service also plays an increasingly significant role every year, and this is not surprising, because for most Kazakhstanis, a car is the – second most important purchase after real estate.
But what the Kazakhstani car owner does not change is his willingness to give his last money for a car. To a greater extent, this trend is typical for the economy segment, where the share of sales on credit reaches 80%. «Our share of sales on credit is approximately 60%, which is a low indicator for the market and the result of the presence of premium brands in the – Audi, Cadillac, Porsche, Lexus, and in the premium segment customers practically do not use financial instruments», – Iskakova notes.
Trade-in service is becoming more and more in demand every year: atOrbis Auto its share varies from brand to brand, but the average is 45–50%. Many customers see a benefit in purchasing a car from an authorized dealer even on the secondary market. Today, the interviewee believes, there is a reason for this, given the growing market entry of cars with a dark past.
«We are tightening controls so that such cars do not enter our dealerships, but as we improve our processes, fraudsters use more and more sophisticated schemes. We can get cars imported, for example, from Russia two or three years ago, registered in Kazakhstan, managed to travel on our roads and even change two or three owners. There have been cases when a «clear» car that passed all possible checks ended up in criminal news reports a few years later. No one is immune from this, but in our dealerships we carefully check the history of the car to minimize the risk», – Iskakova comments.
According to the estimates of the car business players, today the competition in the market has reached a «boiling point» and even the big players cannot afford to rest on their laurels. The struggle for customers will intensify: limited market capacity sets the ceiling of consumption, companies selling a limited number of cars will have to leave the market, and new players, Iskakova predicts, will no longer enter Kazakhstan as actively as they did in 2022–2023. Orbis Auto's plans also do not include such an active expansion as before, when the group's portfolio was replenished annually with several new brands, but the dealer network development, reconstruction and construction of dealerships in accordance with brand standards will continue.
«We do everything to make customers coming to our dealerships, – no matter whether it is mass or premium segment, – to be comfortable, to enjoy the way the buying process is organized. The car pickup area in our centers, for example, will be organized in such a way that a memorable visual series complements the positive emotions that a person experiences at the time of purchase. Striving for excellence is an ongoing process, and we are not going to stop», – Iskakova says.
