Iran is a country cut off from Google Play, Visa, AWS, and international venture capital. These restrictions have forced local entrepreneurs to build their own digital ecosystem from scratch.
Iran is a country cut off from Google Play, Visa, AWS, and international venture capital. These restrictions have forced local entrepreneurs to build their own digital ecosystem from scratch.
Today, there are over 6,000 startups in the country. Here are the ten most influential.
Year of foundation: 2006
Founders — brothers Hamid and Syed Mohammadi — launched Digikala in 2006 after a failed attempt to buy a digital camera online, investing their own $10,000.
«Digital cameras were all the rage,» Hamid recalled. «My brother and I wanted to buy one, but we couldn’t find any reviews in Farsi online.» They eventually bought the camera, but discovered that the lens was not genuine. «That got us thinking, what if there was a website where you could read all the reviews and buy the product with confidence?»
With over 5 million product varieties, over 150,000 sellers on the marketplace, and 40 million monthly active users, Digikala is considered the dominant e-commerce business in the Middle East.
In August 2024, state-owned mobile operator MCI acquired a 40% stake in Digikala Group, a deal that confirmed the company’s status as a strategic asset for the country. It was valued at $500 million.
Year of foundation: 2014
Snapp launched in 2014 as Taxi Yaab and in 2016 received $22 million in investment from South African telecom MTN Group.
According to a 2017 interview with Shahram Shahkar, the company’s former CEO, at the time, Snapp had over 300,000 active drivers and over 500 other employees.
From a taxi service, it has grown into a full-fledged super app: about 85% of Iran’s population, or over 72 million users, use its services every day.
Snapp has set a record of over 4 million rides per day. The super-app Snapp currently offers 20 different services to over 60 million users in 287 cities.
According to Snapp’s 2023-24 annual report, the app had over 72 million active users, opened over 5.35 billion times during the year, which averages over 14.7 million per day.
Year of foundation: 2011
Cafe Bazaar is an Iranian Android app store founded in April 2011. It controls 97% of the market and has over 40 million users.
Café Bazaar rose to prominence in 2016 when Google blocked access to the Google Play app store in the country. Café Bazaar is now a popular platform focused on local apps, including Iranian banking and e-commerce apps.
The platform initially reached 20 million users in 2013, but by 2019 it had expanded to over 40 million. Recent reports indicate over 50-56 million registered users, mostly speaking Persian.
By the end of 2023, the platform had recorded 2.7 billion app installs/updates and over 46 million successful transactions.
In January 2025, Cafe Bazaar was acquired by Tapsell, a leading Iranian mobile advertising network. — for an undisclosed amount.
Year of foundation: 2012
Divar users place over 139.7 million new ads annually, and the application itself is opened by over 53.1 million unique users per year — information as of 2022.
The company planned an IPO on the Tehran Stock Exchange, but in March 2025, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) blocked the listing, refusing to provide the required security clearances.
Year of foundation: 2017
In February 2024, 70% of Tapsi shares were sold through the Iranian Stock Exchange for ~$38 million — the first full exit of the founders through the public market in the country’s history.
Tapsi serves 25 million users and has 1.5 million drivers. The company is positioned as Snapp’s main competitor and is among the five largest tech companies in Iran.
Year of foundation: 2010
Founded by Ali and Mostafa Amiri, ZarrinPal is Iran’s leading payment gateway, processing 3 million transactions per month and powering 60% of the country’s digital economy.
The service is integrated into Digikala, Snapp, and hundreds of other platforms, replacing Visa and Mastercard, which are unavailable due to sanctions. The company has survived several waves of government blockades, but has resumed operations each time.
Year of foundation: 2014
Torob (up to 500 employees) is a smart search engine that helps millions of users across Iran find the best price on over 6 million products, presented in over 12 thousand stores.
Year of foundation: ~2020
BluBank’s revenue in 2024 was 2.862 trillion tomans (approximately $40-50 million) with a net profit of 549 billion tomans. The customer base grew by 92% year-on-year, and revenue more than doubled compared to the previous year.
BluBank launched the Dong feature — shared account splitting — which went viral among a young Iranian audience.
Year of foundation: 2014
Alibaba.ir is an Iranian online travel agency founded in January 2014 by Majid Hosseini Nejad in Tehran. The company operates primarily through its website alibaba.ir as a pioneer in online ticketing services for domestic and international travel in Iran.
The company specializes in booking flights, trains, buses, hotels and tours, providing a comprehensive platform that has facilitated over 80 million trips for Iranian travelers by 2024, including over 25 million air passengers and 43 million train and bus trips.
As the largest online travel agency in Iran with over 10 million users, Alibaba has achieved significant growth, surpassing 10 million ticket sales in 2021 alone and establishing itself as a dominant player in the country’s tourism sector.
It is not related to the Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma in 1999.
Year of foundation: ~2016
BimeBazar serves millions of users, compares offers from different insurance providers. In 2025, it launched AI risk assessment, which allows reducing insurance premiums by 15%.
This is the first Iranian insurance aggregator to rely on algorithmic underwriting.
The advantage of buying from Bima Bazaar is that you can check the prices of all insurance policies and always buy the cheapest one. They also always have a lot of discounts on different insurance policies.
