BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 1. PASHA Holding is sourcing startups not only in Azerbaijan but across the region and matching them with the specific needs of companies in its portfolio, Tugra Musayeva, head of innovation at PASHA Financial Holding, said at the CAMCA Regional Forum 2026 in Baku today, Trend's correspondent reports from the event.
She made the remarks during the “Regional Synergies: Designing the Next Digital Silk Road” session.
According to Musayeva, the group has a program under which its companies work with startups and implement technological solutions through pilot projects. A successful pilot at one company can serve as a recommendation for other companies within the group.
“We source startups from the region based on the needs of our companies in banking, insurance, e-commerce and other areas. When a pilot is successful at one company, the solution is passed on to other companies in the group. They trust each other’s experience: if a solution has worked for one company, it is likely to help another as well. Today, this has become common practice within the group,” Musayeva said.
“The local market is not enough, so we look for solutions at the regional level. For a startup, this provides something that is most difficult to obtain: the first customer in a new market. Instead of entering a new country, building relationships from scratch and spending a year looking for the first customer, it gets an entry point through our group,” she said.
INMerge VC's regional investment portfolio
Speaking about investments, Musayeva discussed the work of venture capital fund INMerge VC, which began investing in January this year. The fund has made six investments to date, with its portfolio regional from the outset, comprising startups from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Türkiye.
“We are seeing more and more founders addressing regional rather than local challenges. The advantage of the region is that the problems are very similar: payments and transfers, small-business lending and connecting customers to digital financial services. If a founder has found a technical solution that can be easily scaled and does not need to build a product from scratch to enter, for example, Azerbaijan from Uzbekistan, we are immediately interested,” Musayeva said.
According to her, INMerge can offer startups more than capital, including a pilot project, a first customer and access to the Azerbaijani market through the group's companies.
INMerge as a regional platform
Musayeva also spoke about the role of the INMerge Innovation Summit, which PASHA Holding is developing as a regional platform for government bodies, corporations, startups and investors from the Caucasus, Central Asia and neighboring regions.
According to her, INMerge has expanded beyond Azerbaijan, with events held in Istanbul, Tashkent and Berlin. The main summit will take place in Baku on November 30 and December 1, 2026.
“INMerge is a place where regional demand for innovation meets supply. Large companies in the region still look for startups individually, each in its own country. We want them to share their challenges, recognize each other’s pilots and invest together,” she said.
Musayeva stressed that a startup scales across the region not only because its technology is scalable.
“It scales when the ecosystem reduces the cost of entering the next market. The goal is not simply to connect our countries through digital channels, but to make the region work as a single market for innovation,” she said.
