Stanford Business School will begin studying the Freedom Holding case

The Stanford Graduate School of Business has published a case study on its official website titled "Freedom Holding: Building an Ecosystem as a Path to Scale." It describes the history of Freedom Holding, its current position and development prospects.

The material is based on an interview with the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Freedom Holding Corp. Timur Turlov and describes in detail the company's scaling strategy, building a digital ecosystem of financial and consumer services, as well as key management decisions.

Special attention is paid to the role of technology, vertical integration and corporate culture in the dynamic growth of the business, the company said in an official statement.

"Our experience in creating a strong, customer-oriented ecosystem is recognized by one of the world's leading business schools. This is an important confirmation that we are moving in the right direction," Timur Turlov said.

As noted in the description of the material, the case is designed to help students learn how to evaluate and prioritize strategic growth options for platform businesses operating in emerging markets.

"Students will analyze the structure of the ecosystem (Freedom. — Ed.), competitive dynamics and technology integration, as well as develop approaches to making important decisions in conditions of uncertainty and limited resources," the explanatory note says.

The Stanford School's cases are used in MBA (Master of Business Administration) programs to train middle and senior managers. Stanford Business School graduates included the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy, the founder of the Nike sports brand Phil Knight, the heads of GM, Time Warner, Anheuser-Busch InBev and entrepreneurs from around the world. The school's campus is located in Silicon Valley.

Freedom Holding was founded by Timur Turlov more than 15 years ago — in 2008. Over the years, the company has undergone a radical transformation, turning from a local Kazakhstani player Freedom Finance into a global fintech platform.

In the early years, the company was only engaged in providing access to the American stock market, but gradually transformed into an ecosystem of financial services with two dozen different business lines: brokerage, banking, insurance, fintech, lifestyle services, telecom and media. In 2024, the Freedom SuperApp "superapp" was launched, combining all the holding's services for individuals. With it, users can pay for goods, invest, insure property, book tickets, and use mobile communications. The SuperApp also has a built-in Freedom investment currency. This tool allows you to accumulate fractional shares of the holding in the form of cashback. This model, according to Timur Turlov, is designed to expand beyond Kazakhstan.

Freedom has offices and representative offices in more than 20 countries around the world, including the USA, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. The total customer base exceeds 5 million people.

In the fall of 2019, shares of Freedom Holding Corp. They began trading on the Nasdaq American technology exchange under the code FRHC. In six years, the securities have increased in price by 10 times, significantly outperforming their closest competitors in terms of profitability. Since the summer of 2025, the shares have been added to the American Russell 3000 composite index.

Timur Turlov remains the largest shareholder of the holding with a share of more than 70%. The American magazine Forbes estimates his fortune at $7 billion, which makes him one of the richest people in Kazakhstan and the world's businessmen under the age of 40. The company also has hundreds of thousands of minority shareholders who are clients of the holding. They became its co-owners thanks to a unique marketing campaign launched a year ago, in which Freedom Bank cardholders began to receive cashback in the form of shares of shares from each transaction.

"We have gone from a local broker to a full-fledged digital ecosystem with offices in two dozen countries, with our own infrastructure, with products that simply did not exist before. This path was not straight – there were mistakes, overestimations, and collisions. But all this is a living business, with real decisions and real consequences," Timur Turlov commented on the release of the Stanford case on his social networks.