'Smartphone on the Head': How Kazakhstani Entrepreneurs Turned an Ordinary Helmet into a Business Earning Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars

The first helmet made by entrepreneur Saken Syzdykov shattered during testing, and it took him a year and a half to build a successful prototype. That experience led to the 2023 launch of Kazakhstan's first smart helmet manufacturer — Best Vision Technologies. Together with his partners, Saken turned an ordinary protective helmet into a device with a camera, 4G and AI that watches over worker safety. Today the company operates not only in Kazakhstan but also in the UAE and Qatar, and is preparing to enter new markets.

This story is part of "Khalyqaralyq Business", a joint special project by Digital Business and Bereke Bank featuring 10 leading companies building international supply chains.

The road to the smart helmet began back in 2014 with a failure: no raw material on the Kazakhstani market could withstand the required loads — manufacturing looked simple in theory, but a working prototype took a year and a half. After the first failures, quality plastic was sourced abroad, and acquaintances in Britain allowed some of their helmet details to be copied. The Kazakhstani version ended up even sturdier, withstanding temperatures from −50 to +50 degrees. Later, in 2022, clients themselves started asking for cameras on helmets — and the requests were far from isolated, making it clear the shop floor needed a smart helmet, not just a helmet. For the new product, Saken brought in partners: Ruslan Khamzin, experienced in IT project management, and Alexey Vladimirov, who had spent 10+ years deploying technology at industrial sites. In 2023 they founded Best Vision Technologies.

The smart helmet runs on Android — essentially a smartphone on the employee's head: camera, laser rangefinder, speaker, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 4G. And the key part is the detection system where video, voice and geolocation flow in: machine learning and computer vision analyze them automatically. The result is a device that monitors workflows without human involvement and shows companies an objective picture of the plant floor. Revenue for 2025 reached $300 thousand, with more than $1 million expected in 2026. The company already operates in the UAE and Qatar, with new markets to follow.

The company's business rests on three revenue streams: smart helmet sales, infrastructure outsourcing (subscription-based cloud services) and AI service subscriptions. Hardware still brought in the lion's share — about 90% of 2025 revenue — but the mix is shifting: a 60/40 split is expected in 2026, with subscriptions targeted at up to 80% over time. The shift is especially visible abroad: one prospective partner in Qatar said outright that equipment without analytics held no interest for him — “If there's no AI, we don't need you.”

Manufacturing sits in Almaty: an in-house helmet and plastic-parts casting shop plus an office where devices are assembled and programmed. Of imported components, only the electronics: boards, cameras and batteries. The 15-strong team produces up to 100 units a week.

Going abroad is far from easy, and the company names three difficulties. First, finding partners: many want to get their hands on one or two devices before deciding, while delivery and customs clearance sometimes cost several times more than the cameras themselves. Second, technology: smart helmets sync with the cloud, and the cloud must be local — inside the client's country, meeting strict data requirements — which is why the company is developing its own sovereign language models. Saudi Arabia is a telling example: strict data-storage rules apply there, and individual language models may be banned. Third, the legal side: documentation and software familiar in Kazakhstan and the CIS have to be fully reworked for other countries. Exports account for about 5% of income so far, with the UAE and Qatar live and Malaysia, Singapore and Uzbekistan under study. Notably, the company itself calls going abroad a test of strength: at home they feel confident, and they want to see how much demand the solution finds in other countries.

There is also a less obvious difficulty — communication. While in Kazakhstan the team knows how to build the right information backdrop, abroad they have to seek out like-minded allies among businesses and integrators — without them, getting the product to the customer is notably harder.

Next up are chest cameras and tokens for places where helmets aren't worn, a mobile app where a manager — a safety chief, for example — can ask the AI assistant about the shop floor and receive proactive violation alerts, plus robotic platforms with drones and robot dogs for enterprise “digital twins”. On international markets the near-term goal is expanding supply to the UAE, which will require physical presence in the country and local infrastructure. The company stresses the point is not replacing jobs but raising production culture. And the bigger goal goes beyond business: “Our goal is for the grim statistics of workplace fatalities to decline.”

Read the full story on the DigitalBusiness website.

Text: Kristina Ryabova, DigitalBusiness.

Photos: Katerina Malama, DigitalBusiness.