Board of Directors

Vyacheslav Kim is our co-founder and has been with us since our inception. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Kim is a prominent businessman with extensive experience in the sphere of retail. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Magnum, the largest food retailer in Kazakhstan. He is also on the Board of Governors of the Physics and Mathematics School. He graduated from the Almaty State University, majoring in finance, and the Russian-Kazakh Modern Humanitarian University majoring in management.

Mikheil Lomtadze is our co-founder and has been with us since our inception. He currently serves as Chairman of the Management Board, our Chief Executive Officer and an executive director. Prior to joining us in 2007, Mr. Lomtadze was a partner at Baring Vostok Capital Partners. From 1995 to 2000, Mr. Lomtadze founded and developed GCG Audit, a strategy consulting and auditing firm in Georgia, which later became part of the Ernst & Young global network. From 2018 to 2022, Mr. Lomtadze was named the best CEO in Kazakhstan by members of the Kazakhstan Growth Forum. He was also named the best CEO in Kazakhstan according to the survey carried out by Forbes and PricewaterhouseCoopers from 2017 to 2022. Mr. Lomtadze received a bachelor’s degree from the European School of Management (Georgia) and holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School (class of 2002). Mr. Lomtadze is currently a member of Harvard Business School’s Middle East & North Africa Advisory Board.

Nikolay Zinovyev has served as a director since 2019. Since November 2017, Mr. Zinovyev has been a founder and CEO of Superbrands.ru, a Russian B2B online marketplace. In 1999, Mr. Zinovyev founded Europlan, a car leasing company in Russia, and from 2002 to 2015, he served as its CEO. Prior to that, from 2000 to 2002, he was a vice-president at the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund, established by the U.S. government to provide equity and debt financing to small and medium size enterprises in Russia. Mr. Zinovyev received an English Language Teacher diploma from the State Pedagogical University, Rostov-on-Don, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Moscow State University of Commerce.

Douglas Gardner has served as a director since 2019. Since 2007, he has been a founder and CEO of CAIGAN Capital, an advisory, consulting and director services firm. From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Gardner was a managing partner for Russia, Kazakhstan and the CIS at Ernst & Young. From 2001 to 2002, he was a managing partner for the Central Asia region at Arthur Andersen. Mr. Gardner is a Certified Public Accountant. Mr. Gardner has previously held board and audit committee chairman positions for banks, brokerage, investment and retail enterprises, real estate development firms and family offices. Mr. Gardner graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in accounting.

Szymon Gutkowski has served as a director since 2019. Mr. Gutkowski has been a managing partner of DDB Poland, a marketing strategy company in Poland since 2000, and has served as a board member of some of its group companies since 2003. His expertise lies in the field of brand building, marketing and communications strategy. From 2014 to 2018, Mr. Gutkowski was a president of the Polish Marketing Communication Association, and since 2017, Mr. Gutkowski has been a member of the Client Advisory Board of Meta in Poland. Since 2020, he has been a board member of the Stefan Batory Foundation. Mr. Gutkowski graduated from the Warsaw University with a degree in theoretical mathematics and economy and obtained an executive MBA and master’s degree from the joint program of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the International Management Center of the Warsaw University.

Alina Prawdzik has served as a director since 2019. From February to December 2022, she was a business director at Meta in Poland. From 2017 to 2020, Ms. Prawdzik was a managing partner at Innogy Innovation Hub, where she was responsible for operations in Central Eastern Europe and was a head of its “Smart & Connected Buildings” investment focus. From 2016 to 2017, she was an adviser to the management board on digital strategy and e-commerce at Eurocash (Poland). From 2014 to 2015, Ms. Prawdzik was a chief operating officer at Audioteka (Poland). From 2006 to 2013, she worked at eBay as a country manager (Poland), regional manager responsible for European Emerging Markets and general manager responsible for International Expansion Europe. From 1993 to 2005, she was a brand manager and assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble (Poland and Baltics). Ms. Prawdzik graduated from the University of Gdansk (Poland) with a master’s degree in economics and organization of international trade.