Tehran, Iran, November 23
By Mehdi Sepahvand –Trend:
Startup incubator NEST VC Managing Partner Aaron Fu says he sees a lot of similarities between the Iranian market and markets in developing countries to start and improve Fintech infrastructure.
"We see a lot of similarities with some other very fast-opening economies. I just came from Myanmar. They moved from almost zero percent GSM penetration to 80 percent 3G penetration over the course of three years. They have also built they own financial system quite internally," he told Trend November 22 while in Tehran on business convention.
"We see a lot of opportunities in these markets for people to kind of skip steps two, three, and four and go straight to five. There is a lot to say about what happens if you don’t have an existing robust infrastructure and suddenly you open up you get to not worry about the past and just move on," he explained.
Aaron has more than 10 years of experience in financial services and technology across Europe, Asia and Africa with Standard Chartered and Société Générale. He joined Nest to extend its start-up eco-system and accelerator programs to the rapidly emerging innovation hubs in Africa.
"We take technology that’s born somewhere to somewhere else, working with banks and other local partners," he said.
"I live in Kenya, where people moved very fast from cash-based all the way through to non-card reliant and non-international technology reliant solutions."
Iran’s country-wide payment system Shaparak is outdated and the country’s banking system has not had the chance to improve it in cooperation with leading international companies because Iran was under sanctions until early 2016.
Now as sanctions have been lifted, Iran is seeing many business leaders in the technology sphere who seek cooperation with Iranian counterparts.
"We are trying to build a joint program with the local company Avatech, like what we did in South Korea, we partner with local careers and day-to-day local content and do some marketing and then go back to the company and do the internationalization components with companies that work elsewhere."
"So at NEST, we both look at taking Iranian startups outside Iran and to work with some others maybe in Asia maybe in Africa and to go over technologies that are born in Africa or Asia and see how they can apply here."