Isolation by the West fuels Iranian tech startups
TEHRAN, Iran — Mostafa Meisami has given up on the farming life, trading his old job raising cattle for a better-paying gig ferrying commuters through the notoriously trafficclogged streets of the Iranian capital Tehran.
The 38-year-old fatherto-be plies his trade in a brand-new, locally assembled Chinese hatchback, scrolling for fares using an app on his Samsung smartphone.
Yes, even in Iran, there’s an app for that — and quite a few other things too.
The Islamic Republic remains in many ways cut off economically from the rest of the world. Big-name Western brands shun the market for fear of violating sanctions that remain in place even after the country’s landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
That means no KFC — just local upstarts like “Iran Fried Chicken” — or credit and ATM cards connected to global banking networks. Visitors to the country must carry in thick wads of dollars. Many popular social-networking sites like Facebook are blocked by government censors.
Order from Amazon or call an Uber? Forget about it. In their place, a surprisingly active tech startup scene has sprung up. It’s driven by a growing number of Iranian millennials who see their country of 80 million people not as an isolated outcast but as a market ripe with opportunity.
Among the fastest- growing companies in the digital transformation is Snapp, the ride-hailing app Meisami uses.
He estimates he makes more than $900 working in a good month, pulling in a much larger cut per fare than he would driving for a traditional taxi-style car service. His hours are long — 12 hours a day most days a week — but he likes being able to pick when and where he works.
“This opened a door to people like me who had financial problems,” he said.
Snapp is owned by the Iran Internet Group, which has emerged as one of the leaders in the country’s startup scene. It is backed by telecom Irancell, which state-linked investors have stakes in, as well as South African telecom MTN.
Its other businesses include an online shopping site Bamilo, a food-ordering app called Zoodfood and a hotel booking site known as Pintapin — a useful service in a country that most booking portals don’t touch.
Nader Habibi, an Iranian expert at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said the rollout of 4G mobile connections and high-speed landline internet service over the past few years has fueled Iran’s tech boom.
So too have supportive government policies like loans for innovative startups and deferrals on military conscription for promising young inventors and tech professionals. And the same international sanctions that have kept Iran isolated have been a boon for the tech sector by limiting competition.