Profile: IradOne's New Chairman

TALAS — Alikhan Toktarov, appointed this week to chair the board of IradOne, was born in Talas on 14 September 1980, the second child of Erlan Toktarov and his wife Anara. He grew up mainly in Talas and, from 1989, in Kobozev, and was eleven when the civil war of 1992 began. Under the territorial administration he attended an English-language preparatory school in Talas.

He studied international business in Bishkek from 1998 to 2000 and then moved to London, where in 2003 he took a bachelor's degree in media and management at Regent's College. That year he came home to work in his father's bonded-warehousing business near Talas Air Base. In 2008 he founded the Steppe Luxury Group, which obtained exclusive regional import rights for European cars, Swiss watches and American consumer electronics, and from 2011 he acquired land along the central avenue of Talas for office towers, hotels and leisure venues, several of them joint ventures with his younger brother Adil.

In 2010 he married Madina Toktarova (née Iskakova), a former IradOne presenter; they have two children. He owns racehorses and collects classic cars. He rarely gives interviews, and he has not said what changes he plans at the broadcaster. Colleagues in the property business describe him as a promoter of consumer brands and entertainment, which he has called the future of the Talas economy.