Factsheet: Cafe Bazaar
An Application Marketplace: Cafe Bazaar is the provider of an application and digital content marketplace catering primarily to a Persian speaking audience with nearly 40 million users. That is up from just 6 million users 6 years ago. 29 million people use Cafe Bazaar every month and 5.3 million use it every day. This makes Cafe Bazaar easily the largest app store among Iranians, taking up 85% of the market share.
History and Ownership: Cafe Bazaar was formed in April 2011 and quickly became a leading company in Iran’s thriving information technology sector. Cafe Bazaar is a product of Hezardastan Information Technology Development Group that is owned by an international group of shareholders.
Cafe Bazaar is a key platform for up-and-coming developers and digital start-ups: Tens of thousands of applications and games are added every year thanks to a thriving base of app developers and an increasing amount of interest from developers abroad. The marketplace has over 160,000 applications in a variety of genres ranging from entertainment, games, online payment solutions, health and wellness, e-learning platforms, and news. During this last reporting year, between March of 2017 and March of 2018, the revenue from applications jumped by 64%, while revenue from games spiked by an impressive 94%; the number of transactions for both also increased by 18 and 22% respectively.
A Thriving Local Tech Eco-System: Cafe Bazaar works with 21,000 thousand developer teams in Iran alone. 23% of those employed directly by developers are women. The number of teams has grown exponentially from only 3 thousand a mere 5 years ago. The Tehran Province leads the way with well over 2,000 active developer teams and almost 33% of the direct employment created.
Local Knowledge: Cafe Bazaar’s local focus allows it to efficiently tailor, and help developers tailor, their products to the market by utilises Iranian e-payment methods and catering to a Persian-speaking audience. Cafe Bazaar also features 24-hour customer support in Persian for its customers.
International Investment: In 2018, Amsterdam-based International Internet Investment Coöperatief (IIIC) committed to investing €38 million in Cafe Bazaar’s parent company, Hezardastan Information Technology Development Group, in exchange for a 10% stake. The investment the Dutch firm will facilitate Cafe Bazaar moving into new fields of innovation such as artificial intelligence and web services as well as investing in local technology projects.
Global Partnerships: There are about 120 non-Iranian publishers and developers offering about 800 products through Cafe Bazaar. Prominent foreign game developers, especially ones from China, including Supercell, Tap4Fun and Elex have staked a position in the Iranian market through offering their products on Cafe Bazaar.
Financial Tools: “Pay with Bazaar” has been a key feature of many applications and games on Cafe Bazaar. It has been used by 10 million users in 40 thousand applications to make purchases.
The number of financial transactions conducted through Cafe Bazaar has also increased dramatically to 14,500,000 million transactions, between March of 2017 and March of 2018, from just fewer than 4 million transactions during the year five years ago. 54% of these transactions were in-app purchases, 29% were app purchases and the remaining 17% involved both.
Emerging Video Service: In 2018, Cafe Bazaar announced a new collaboration with local IPTV service provider AIO to deliver ad-supported streaming services. Cafe Bazaar’s video streaming option during the 2018 World Cup attracted 4 million users. Afterward, we have partnered with another streaming service to offer a wide array of tv shows and movies to be purchased and enjoyed on Cafe Bazaar.
