The Iranian version of Coursera, Behamooz partnered with us to validate and refine its business model. Going through 9 s
COMPANY PROFILE | MAY 2018
Creating Opportunities via Innovation OPPMAKR Institute Was Founded in 2012 Our mission is to shape innovative ventures in Iran, enabling innovation culture. In the absence of hope to a better economic future for Iranians, we believe we must create opportunities for everyone to grow. Therefore we always seek for responsible optimists to join, and monitor best practices to decode and learn the best-in-class business trends and strategies.
Our Initiatives Structure
Since it’s birthday, the OPPMAKR Institute (Forsatafarin Noavar Inc.) has been evolved to the needs of its stakeholders and controls four organizations. While the institute works as a think tank to coordinate and direct operations, other entities focus on necessary areas of action.
ORGANIZATION
FOCUS AREA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS STRATEGY ADVISORY
MANAGEMENT CONSULTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
VENTURE CAPITAL ANGEL INVESTMENT
COMMUNITY BUILDING EVENT MANAGEMENT
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018 ONWARD
How We Think and How We Act
1 Beliefs
2 Work
3 Stories
“
Move fast and break things.
”
The Future We See Opportunities for Everyone At the OPPMAKR Institute, we start from a fundamental belief: "We can make a future where everyone has the opportunity to grow." The only thing that keeps individuals from activating these opportunities is their lack of empowerment. If we invest certain resources like time and energy in people, they will discover their full potential and create a positive impact for themselves and the world around them. We also believe that businesses and organizations are structures of people and can make the world a better place via digital transformation. In our platform, we provide strategic partnerships and access to a network of trusted minds to convert passion projects into profitable and impactful ventures.
Work Ethics
Valuing Your Social Capital In 100% of the projects we acquire, we carefully document involvement track record of individuals who helped the acquisition process -whether they helped us find the lead, or they create trust between two parties, and we always make it worth.
Not Only for the Money We believe that the real sense of fulfillment comes from finding a “meaning” in what we do. Thus, we semiologically analyze the projects we face, not only to be profitable but to see whether doing that job, moves us toward our vision.
How We Think and How We Act
1 Beliefs
2 Work
3 Stories
Our Strategy to Enable Innovation In Iran Mission: Enabling Innovation Culture
Strategy 1 - Spread Knowledge ILIA OPPMAKR management consulting addresses managerial challenges of SMEs and
Mission:
Enabling Innovation Culture
startups.
Strategy 2 - Create Communities VIRA Institute of Creativity and Innovation supports and organizes some of the largest events in Iran.
To create opportunities for everyone to grow to their fullest potential, we need to enable the culture of innovation in Iran. As our mission, our strategy is to create communities around creativity and innovation, absorb funds and invest in select startups, as well as providing world-class knowledge for entrepreneurs to thrive.
Strategy 3 - Invest in People Ghasedak Ventures partners with visionary entrepreneurs to provide them with funds and strategic partnerships with select organizations.
Service Categories Community Building While the elites of Iran are highly connected, yet they lack trustful relationships. VIRA Institute of Creativity and Innovation builds communities of trust as a service to encourage and spread ideas that we believe in.
Strategy Consulting Leveraging years of management consulting experience of our partner, ILIA Corporation, ILIA OPPMAKR joint venture provides general management and crisis management consulting as well as company setup service for tech startups and SMEs in who want to thrive in Iran.
Investment and Partnerships Ghasedak Ventures provides seed-stage investment as well as high value strategic partnerships for select startups and other startup role players i.e. accelerators, and other VCs.
Our Initiatives Structure
Since it’s birthday, the OPPMAKR Institute (Forsatafarin Noavar Inc.) has been evolved to the needs of its stakeholders and controls four organizations. While the institute works as a think tank to coordinate and direct operations, other entities focus on necessary areas of action.
ORGANIZATION
FOCUS AREA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS STRATEGY ADVISORY
MANAGEMENT CONSULTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT
VENTURE CAPITAL ANGEL INVESTMENT
COMMUNITY BUILDING EVENT MANAGEMENT
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018 ONWARD
HIGHLY PRACTICAL VIRA
SOLUTIONS
INSTITUTE OPPMAKR INSTITUTE
Service Positioning
GHASEDAK VENTURES
High Rate of Value for Money
ECONOMIC
PREMIUM
SOLUTION
SOLUTION
PRICING
ILIA OPPMAKR
PRICING
CONSULTING
Depending on nature of the project and the problem we want to solve, we assign the project to our network with different positions in the market. We generally believe in practical solutions, that is why we provide even consulting and research using practical methodologies. We carefully control value for money KPI to make sure our clients are satisfied. HIGHLY THEORETICAL SOLUTIONS
Not Only Clients To Do Business With, but Partners Our portfolio of projects impacted over a hundred of organizations from smart startups to huge multinationals, here are a few examples of the organisations we have worked with.
OPPMAKR Responsibility Program
Event Curation Support Having a network of community builders in our Brain Trust program, we work with select event organizers of TEDx, Creative Mornings, Startup Weekend and Startup Grind, etc. to help them curate their events.
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Public Speakings While we carefully consider every single public speaking invitation, yet, we do not charge for sharing what we believe in and look into it as our obligation. We have been invited to talk about leadership, management, and why we work.
Supporting TEDxTehran With our founder, Reza Ghiabi being the Curator of TEDxTehran, we took this opportunity to dedicate almost 40% of VIRA Institute’s capacity to organize TEDxTehran. TEDxTehran is the largest TEDx event in the Middle East and the first TEDx event in Iran.
The Way We Work
Effectual Reasoning in Iran
Our Approach
Iran has a population of about 80 million and is the
On the other hand, to implement our solutions, we
18th largest economy in the world with a GDP of
leverage the “Change Formula” and start
USD 400 billion; located at the heart of the
with finding the root of pain in our client’s
Middle East, Iran is poised to become the center of
organization. Then we work closely with the client to
manufacturing, export, and logistics within the
find out a crystal clear image of what future should
region. Despite the challenges still facing Iran, for
look like. Only then, we can inspire and accompany
those that are willing to play the medium to the
our client to take the first steps.
long-term game, the country presents an attractive investment destination for global industry players.
We have learned the hard way that the most interesting ventures are built in a space in which the
But the challenge still remains, Iran’s economic
future is not only unknown but unknowable. Still,
trends are not transparent, well defined and
yet, Iranian entrepreneurs do shape this
absolutely fast changing. After years of
unpredictable future. We use techniques which
implementing innovative solutions, co-creating
minimize the use of prediction and allows our
startups, organizing events and optimizing
client to shape the future. These five principles,
processes, we believe that the best approach to
listed below, make up our logic:
address challenges in Iran is with the help of Effectual Reasoning. Effectual Reasoning provides a way to control a future that is inherently unpredictable.
Focusing on the Downside Risk
Starting From the Means When we are set out to help a new
We limit risk by understanding
initiative shape, we start with our
what our client can afford to lose
client’s means: who they are, what they know, and whom they know. Then, we imagine possibilities that
Bird-in- Affordable hand Loss
originate from their means.
large all-or-nothing opportunities. We choose goals and actions where there is upside even if the
Lemonade Patchwork rule Quilt Leverage Contingencies
at each step, instead of seeking
downside ends up happening.
Form Partnerships
We invite and welcome the surprise factor.
We encourage partnerships with self-
Instead of making “what-if” scenarios to deal
selecting stakeholders. By obtaining pre-
with worst-case scenarios, we interpret “bad”
commitments from these key partners early
news and surprises as potential clues to
on in the venture, we reduce uncertainty and
create new markets.
co-create the new market with its interested participants.
Challenging the Status Quo
1 2
1. The Iranian Work Culture The way most of the Iranian companies work is broken. They are slow, inefficient and unprofessional.
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2. Shortcuts to Happiness Most people (and companies) in Iran believe there are business shortcuts to make tremendous amounts of money without creating an actual “value” and working hard.
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3. Following the Crowd Like sheeps following their first in the row, in high stress working environments (like Iranian organizations), the majority of individuals and companies do not actively think and strategize to choose their own path, instead, they do what others do.
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Effectiveness To challenge the Iranian work culture, our strategy is to benchmark the most professional organizations in our industry. Being a member of the HUS Institute of Lichtenstein, we constantly learn from forward-thinkers to apply local solutions with international standards. In the past 12 months, 83% of our proposals converted to projects.
Acquisition
Repeat Business
Percentage
Rate
68% 83%
2
Focusing on Value As our great friend agency, Be&Do states, “most money businesses lose is money they simply don't make”. We help our clients to make money and only charge them for the services that create real actual value for them. Vise-versa, we only take part of the projects that add value to our company.
Percentage of New Target Clients Contracted 55%
45%
Percentage of Private Sector vs. Goverment Sector Accounts 83%
17%
3
Differentiation Whether it’s a business model, agreement proposal or a consulting service, we do not copy and pate offers or solutions. Instead, we carefully analyze the business environment we are in and make a tailor-made suggestion for every business transaction.
OPPMAKR Brain Trust We consult our offers with our network of visionaries to make sure they’re doable.
OPPMAKR Semiology We have ongoing semiological analysis on the latest trends of innovation in Iran.
Industry
Trends
12000
About
the Industry
9000
6000
Growing Innovation Community From less than a thousand in 2012 to more than 12,000 active tech startup founders and executives, 3000
startup culture is booming in Iran. Following growth of this community, there are early technology adopters and an early majority to use innovative products and services. 2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
Growing
% of Iran’s GDP
1.2
0.9
0.6
0.3
2013
Market Value of the Innovation Related Industries Is Growing Rapidly The new generation of startup-like companies has been shaped in and around 2008. It is estimated that in 2013 this generation of companies had only 0.005% of Iran’s GDP, yet they have created more value since. Last year they had more than 1% of Iran’s GDP of 420 Million Dollars.
2014
2015
2016
2017
The Big Picture Resistance Economy and Iran’s Development Plan Since 1991, Iranian authorities have adopted a comprehensive strategy to reach to the country’s vision by 2025. The middle term program to reach Iran’s vision is called the development plan and is issued every 5 years. Everything about Iran’s Development Plan falls into the category of Resistance Economy.
Iran’s 2025 Vision “By 2025 Iran is a developed country, on first place in the region in the realms of economy, knowledge, and technology; with an Islamic and revolutionary identity, an inspiration for the world and with productive and influential interactions in International relations.”
Iran’s Development Plan Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, outlined the general policies of the country’s 6th sequential development plan: A comprehensive five-year plan for Iran’s economic development from 2016 to 2021 is to pioneering in science, technology, and culture in the region.
Supporting Trends
Entrepreneurial Opportunities With the GDP of over USD 400 Billion, Iran is endowed with roughly 1% of world’s total population and land mass, and 8% of world’s natural resources that presents tremendous potential in human capital. We believe the innovative industries will boom in Iran, new companies will be born and existing companies will have no choice but to adapt to digitalization because of the 4 megatrends we sense.
Demographics
Development Plan
Young: 67% of the population is under 35 years old. | Educated: 4th number of engineers in the world | Balanced: 5 million university students almost equally divided between both genders in 2017.
2025 Vision: Iranian authorities adopted a comprehensive strategy to reach to Iran’s vision. | Resistance Economy: Iran’s development plan focuses on science, technology and culture, thus emphasizing “knowledgebased” companies.
FDI Vs. GDP
GEI
Because of the sanctions Iran’s Foreign Direct Investment is relatively low giving the country’s GDP. In specific, 1/5 of the nearest economy in the region. This makes Iran a promising investment market.
Iran had the highest growth in Global Entrepreneurship Index (12%) in 2014. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is developing in terms of knowledge and capital.
How We Think and How We Act
1 Beliefs
2 Work
3 Stories - examples of our work
01 ICECD E-Commerce Monitor Platform Development Iran Center for e-Commerce Development (ICeCD) partnered with OPPMAKR Institute in 2014 to create a platform for monitoring and quantifying e-commerce activities in Iran. During the period of 8 months, a series of Key Performance Indexes have been defined and prioritized considering the ICECD’s strategies. Giving that KPIs, data sources, information flows, documented and a software system has been developed. The output of the project delivered a dashboard with accurate information on it to monitor Iran e-commerce to help the center regulate the industry.
03 INOTEX Event Curation INOTEX exhibition has been organized in last 7 years mostly for mature organizations in IT industry. This year for it’s latest event, the government outsourced
02 UNDP Iran Communication Strategy The UN Iran Communications Strategy provides overall communications guidance to the UN in Iran and is aligned with the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) for Iran 2015-2016. The strategy consisted of objectives, action plan, and key messages also an M&E system.
parts of organizing the exhibition to VIRA Institute to gather most of effective startup ecosystem roleplayers to the exhibition. Tehran Creative Mornings, TEDx events, Startup Weekend Tehran, Startup Grind Tehran and their audience have been invited to the exhibition, also the event re-placed to a more innovative venue with the target of 8,000 young techsavvy future leaders.
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Falcon Advising Business Strategy The strategic crisis management advising company, Falcon, for it’s launching year, partnered with OPPMAKR Institute to provide it’s UAE and Greece offices with their delivery action plan. During the one year project, not only their action plan was ready, the institute facilitated their agreement with UN to provide a service of $400K in Afghanistan.
05 Membership at the HUS Institute Located in Liechtenstein principality, THE HUS.institute is a think tank to explore the transformation of the old economy into the Digital Modern era. They critically convoy decision makers on their way to the necessary shift in perspective and world-view supporting the digital transformation towards an economically as well as ecologically sustainable present and future. From enabling Iran to have a platform similar to eEstonia, to Experience Iran project for potential investors of Swiss to experience innovation ecosystem of the country, both institutes work together as their single point of contact between Iran and Europe.
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Fundraising and Business Strategy for Imaan Plus
Partnership With Hampa
Against the usual trend, in 2017, we have successfully raised pre-seed fund for ImaanPlus startup based in Manchester. The startup’s value
For its advisory board, we have partnered with Hampa
proposition was simple, to be the one and only Muslim companion app. By joining the startup with our partner, Barkat Ventures, they have opened an
carpooling startup to support its strategies toward
office in Tehran. The partnership continued to support the startup to develop it’s MarCom Strategy as well as raising its next rounds of investment.
general management and marketing challenges.
08 SWPars Revenue Generation As one of the investments of Kish Espanta holding to manage it’s IT portfolio, SWPars has been created in 2015. We supported the company to reshape in a way that creates most equity value and partner with semi-governmental organizations. By optimizing operations, recruiting like-minded talents, and providing marketing strategy for the company’s products, together we extended company’s size from 5 to 35 people, created notable positive revenue and increased equity value by almost 400% in 8 months.
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Investment on Raavi Application
Investing on Pleep Aid Management
Ghasedak Ventures have invested over $500K on Raavi application. Raavi is a video game to fir its users to experience tipping points of our
In a partnership with IdeaRun, Ghasedak Ventures is
contemporary history using the latest Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies. Like a big production movie, the technique Raavi use is to
investing $100K in a voluntarily aid management
actually create the scene and shoot in site.
mobile application to kick-off in Iran.
12 Marketing Strategy For EPSS By working closely with EPSS audio video company we have created B2B sales and marketing program for the company to double its sales within 6
11
months.
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Aria Foodan Digital Strategy
Business Model Validation for Behamooz
From recruiting a team to handle all online activities of the
The Iranian version of Coursera, Behamooz partnered with us to validate
company, to define the client’s digital strategy, we have provided
and refine its business model. Going through 9 steps of our business
hands-on department creation consulting for the company.
model validation helped the startup to increase its revenue by 25%.
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Qatar Airways Iran Digital Strategy Gap Analysis
ILIA ERP Company Setup
Asna Creative Agency Company Structure
Before starting “e-Commerce Optimization” for Qatar Airways
A newborn representative of Abas
ASNA creative strategy has been running it’s business for
Iran, the client needed to know the results of the project before
Germany, ILIA ERP, partnered with us to
over 10 years until they partnered with us to take their
moving forward and approving the proposal, so we defined a
define their marketing and digital strategy
business to the next level. The partnership ended in
Preliminary Diagnosis to understand the gap between the client’s
as well as setting up their company in
restructuring service packages, organizational charts, and
online strategy as is, and what it should be.
terms of hiring talents and processes.
workflows which ended in a 30% increase of annual revenue.
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Giving Voice to Ideas Worth Spreading From the beginning, Vira Institute has been created to work as the legal representative of TEDxTehran. All TEDxTehran related to the Institute is voluntarily and pro-bono. TEDxTehran was the first and is the largest TEDx event in Iran that has been organized since 2013.
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OPPMAKR Networking Series
Tehran Travel Show
Tehran Art Walk
Reza Ghiabi’s Private Breakfast Series are exclusive series
Our challenge with world record holder, Reza Pakravan
With the partnership of Iran-France and Iran-
of monthly events for trusted network individuals to be
was to create an impactful event from the ground. With
Netherlands Friendship Associations, we have
gathered at the OPPMAKR Institute and discuss various
his world-class knowledge of traveling and our network
successfully gathered 7,000 art lovers in Sa’d Abad
topics, from "The Way We Run out Planet" to "Business,
and community building skills, we have created a first
palace to promote young Iranian artists to their market.
NOT as Usual”.
of its kind experience for the audience.
The event was a pro-bono activity.
Contact
Reza Ghiabi’s OPPMAKR Institute 114 Kajabadi Street, Vali Asr, 1966913187 Tehran, Iran Tel: +98 21 7598 1040 Fax: +98 21 7598 1770 Email:
[email protected] Website: www.oppmakr.com
“ Living only one life in this world is not enough for those of us who see a brighter future for the world around us, the only way we can make that future happen, is to truly understand that together is better. Reza Ghiabi ~ Founder of the OPPMAKR Institute
”
www.ghiabi.com
