Believe the hype, it’s real!
First of all a very happy new year!
I spent the last three weeks of 2016 in Tehran. I’m writing this post to share my personal experience with you.
Bad News
In the spirit of 2016 — bad news first:
Traffic, Traffic, Traffic
That’s right the triple T, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. This is having a major impact on quality of life in Tehran:
- There are too many cars in Tehran. This is more evident at night when the streets turn into spare parking spaces.
- Lack of good public transport. Buses are rundown and the metro is overcrowded with limited routes. Public transport requires a lot more investment to modernise itself and expand it’s capacity.
- Bad driving etiquette. There is a difference between organised traffic and unorganised traffic, the latter is a result of driving in between the lanes. This creates a life threatening issue, the lack of space for movement of emergency services. Since the gap between each car (by sticking to a lane) isn’t respected there is no space left for cars to move either side to allow a breathing space for emergency services to go through.
- Pollution. “hava hast vali kam hast” it translates to “there is air, but little of it”. Pollution is having a profound effect on the mental and physical health of Tehran’s residents.
Good News
The good news is that everyone is infected by the startup bug!
You have clones of Uber (Snapp, Tap30), Youtube (Aparat), App store (Cafe Bazar), Groupon (Netbarg), Craigslist (Divar, Sheypoor), Amazon (Digikala, Bamilo), Deliveroo (Zoodfood, Chilivery), Eventbrite (Evand, Eventbox), the list just goes on!
If you want to order fresh bread, there is a startup for that too, Boghche!
This sudden growth of startups is having a big impact on the consumer behaviour. Due to increasing internet penetration, uptake of smartphones and improved internet speed people are getting used to online shopping and using apps.
In it’s most basic aspect for Iran market, the growth of startups in Iran means job creation. Regardless of the original ideas being born elsewhere, Iranian entrepreneurs are creating companies for their local market to remove pain points for the consumers, thus creating jobs and improving the economy.
This mostly cloning mechanism can work in the short term while the heavy weights, the likes of Amazon and Uber are staying away. It may also be an exit strategy for these clones to eventually be bought by such companies. However this does not change the fact that there is a real need for developing unique ideas and technologies which can have global scalability.
If Iranian entrepreneurs want to have a say at a global stage they need to have products or services that can compete at a global stage, their starting point, being Iran (80 million population, highly educated young population, competitive business environment) is an excellent market to start with, so if they can dominate the Iran market they can eventually look to expand in other countries.
Events and players!
I was fortunate to be in Tehran when a lot of great events were happening; including our very own Iratel Ventures Breakfast Series #10. Other events worthy of mention, some of which I managed to attend are: Elecomp 2016, TedxTehran, Avatech Demo Day, Entrepreneurs Yalda, Startup Weekend Fashion and Tech.
I have to admit our Breakfast event was simply incredible, the quality and engagement of the attendees were simply amazing so I highly recommend reading the recap. If you were one of the attendees, thank you for coming and I hope to see you soon! Also if you are visiting Tehran and would like to connect to active players in the startup ecosystem I highly recommend coming to our next Breakfast event.
Also as I was one of the mentors for the Startup Weekend event, I will be writing a separate post to give you an insight of my experience of this awesome three day event, in the meantime you can watch a summary video of the event here.
Responsibility
Startups are in fashion, no matter where you look, from U.S to Europe to Middle East. In Iran, the startup ecosystem is in it’s infancy, there is a lot of hype simply due to the potential of a successful exit (financial rewards for investors and business opportunities for private sector) also the capacity to create job opportunities in the country. This means a lot of people are watching the ecosystem and it’s players very closely so we have to be careful not to create a bubble. We have to celebrate real success stories and champion good behaviour by the players who truly contribute to raising the standards in corporate as well as social aspects.
For me and my team at Iratel Ventures, the hype is very much real and we are looking to capitalise on this by investing in entrepreneurs building companies with unique technologies that want to compete at a global stage.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post, I love to hear your views on the topics covered so feel free to comment below or email me directly mahyar@iratelventures.com
This is the eleventh in a series of posts about Iratel Ventures Events. We’d love to hear from teams with crazy (but commercial) startups. Get in touch or attend our breakfast series. Finally, don’t forget to get your IV Score or talk to our FundingBot to prepare for your next VC meeting.
Thanks to Mohsen Khalkhali for his contribution.
