Iran’s startup web companies have come on leaps and bounds in the past twelve months. This week the Iranian Website News Agency highlighted a new startup called Kadokado.ir (originating from the French word for present), a new website that sells a whole host of different trinkets and jewellery. In its early stages, this site has a well designed interface and also highlights the much needed direct-to-consumer type of business transaction, which until recently has been seriously lacking in the Iranian online market. The site offers a wide collection of home furnishing items which include miniatures of Iranian fruits including pomegranates. It also has e-namad protection – an online system to protect against credit card fraud within Iran. Although the site is still in its early stages, it is pretty intuitive with a nice overall design for accessing different pages. Home-based manufacturers are actively being encouraged to contact the site to list their wares. And with the government’s support back in October of women working from home, this site may just see a meteoric rise. Kadokado is just the newest site to enter the growing online gift industry, following sites like albasco.com and more major players like digikala.com.
The next new site that has appeared on our radar via Mobin Ranjbar’s techly.co is Ponisha, a website dedicating itself as an online jobs agency for freelance designers and programmers among others. This new site, written entirely in Persian, brings the western concept of “outsourcing” and “freelancing” to Iran. Although Iran is quite used to this method of employment through more traditional channels, this new website provides an additional avenue for job hunters. Ponisha is the largest place for freelancers in Iran to get projects done and also to generate income. The website was launched in Dec, 2011 to help companies and individuals outsource their projects and hire people for short durations. Nima Nourmohammad, the founder of Ponisha said about his site that “Most people usually look for full-time jobs in a company, but I believe freelancing can be a full-time job, and with some training in marketing and negotiation, anyone with any skill could become successful. The benefits are endless. Just imagine there is no boss. In this situation, you can work whenever or wherever you want and on whatever project you desire and still make more money than people with regular employment,” according to techly.co. Currently Ponisha has more than 50,000 freelancers, with 2,400 completed projects and revenue of 5,103,158,949 Rials ($157,000 at market exchange rate) for freelancers. Nourmohammady said that the main goal of Ponisha is to expand. “Our main and most important target is to reach 1 million registered members. We keep adding features, updates and promotions to keep our customers satisfied. Most Ponisha’s growth comes from our organic growth and we are thankful to our users who keep introducing us to their friends and networks.”