Tehran (AFP) – The names may be unfamiliar but the services are immediately recognisable: Snapp is Iran’s answer to Uber, Digikala is its Amazon, and Pintapin its Booking.com.<\/p>\n
US sanctions have protected the Islamic republic’s tech sector, barring Silicon Valley from profiting from one of the world’s most promising emerging markets, and giving a free run to domestic start-ups to recreate their services.<\/p>\n
Even some Californian mumbo-jumbo has been imported: one booth at the Elecomp tech fair in Tehran this week claimed it was “Creating Artificial Mindfulness”.<\/p>\n
But don’t dare call them copycats — transplanting a foreign business model to Iran is never straightforward.<\/p>\n
“It’s not a matter of copying code line-by-line,” said Amirali Mohajer, the 32-year-old chief operating officer of Pintapin.<\/p>\n
“You need local expertise that has to be built from the ground up, and it might need an entirely different business model to make it successful.”<\/p>\n
His office sits alongside several other fast-growing start-ups in the offices of the Iran Internet Group (IIG), a haven of north Tehrani hipsterdom where the jeans are skinny, the headscarves loose, and 20-somethings sip espressos in glass meeting rooms.<\/p>\n
Pintapin’s staff are not just building a website, they are transforming Iran’s entire hotel industry.<\/p>\n
“Up until very recently, a lot of travel arrangements were done completely offline through phone calls and faxes and traditional models that really belong in the last century,” said Mohajer.<\/p>\n
Half the company’s time is spent convincing hotels to give up pen-and-paper reservations and start automating their business.<\/p>\n
Mohajer, who spent 16 years abroad in Britain and Canada, says he came back to Iran because it felt like a place where tech could have “an impact that actually matters”.<\/p>\n
“We really believe we’re working towards creating Iran’s rightful place in the worldwide travel market… helping reconstruct an Iranian identity that’s been unfortunately damaged due to political issues.”<\/p>\n
\n– ‘People love it’ –<\/strong><\/p>\n
Across town, the huge hangars, strip-lighting and shiny booths of the Elecomp tech fair could be anywhere.<\/p>\n
It is growing rapidly: its start-up section had 80 hopefuls three years ago, now there are more than 400 — the usual mix of delivery apps, online shopping and games.<\/p>\n
But global brands are almost entirely absent, the result of severe US sanctions that remain in place despite other countries lifting restrictions under a 2015 nuclear deal.<\/p>\n
Some Iranians have found ways to profit from sanctions: one company at Elecomp buys Amazon products from the United States and ships them to Iranians for a small surcharge.<\/strong><\/p>\n
“People love it. There are many fake products in Iran. When they order from us, they get the real thing,” said its spokesman Hamid Tavakoli.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
But isolation has been a very mixed blessing.<\/p>\n
“There are two sides to the coin. When you are under sanctions, you have an opportunity to do many things yourself,” said the fair’s organiser, Naserali Saadat.<\/p>\n
“But generally, it’s not a good thing… you can’t live like an island in this world.”<\/p>\n
That view is echoed by German-Iranian Ramtin Monazahian, who came from Berlin in 2014 to found e-commerce site Bamilo.<\/p>\n
He may not have to worry about Amazon muscling him out of the way, but nor can he hope they will buy him up for billions as happens elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Moreover, he needs a thriving retail sector to underpin his services, and sanctions “hit the consumer area pretty hard. Purchasing power is suffering… that’s hurting all businesses,” he said.<\/p>\n
Still, he sees huge potential in a country of 80 million people with a large, consumerist middle-class.<\/p>\n
“It’s probably the last big country with no major competition,” he said.<\/p>\n
– Bigger picture –<\/p>\n
Foreign investors have taken notice. Iran’s tech scene has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from firms such as South Africa’s MTN, Germany’s Rocket and Swedish company Pomegranate.<\/p>\n
The real breakthrough is not necessarily the tech itself, said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of the Europe-Iran Forum, but the forging of these foreign partnerships.<\/p>\n
“This is not just about digital innovation and young people thinking entrepreneurially — which is somewhat new in Iran — but also how venture capital can influence the bigger picture of investing,” he said.<\/p>\n
He predicts these partnerships will now be replicated in more traditional sectors like retail.<\/p>\n
“Tech was a smart place to start — small initial amounts of capital and you’re dealing with young entrepreneurs rather than entrenched family owners,” said Batmanghelidj.<\/p>\n
“Of course, many challenges remain, but they were made by people and can be solved by people.”<\/p>\n