They have a competition called ‘The Young Innovators Competition’ that they are looking for gifted young entrepreneurs with ideas for innovative social enterprises. The winners receive up to USD 10, 000 in seed funding, as well as business workshops, networking, showcasing and pitching opportunities with potential investors at ITU Telecom World in Doha followed by a mentorship programme throughout the development year to help their businesses to thrive.

The Young Innovators Competition has many challenges includes ‘Local Digital Content’, ‘Open Source Technologies for Disaster Management’ and ‘Smart Cities and Climate Change’.

Sahar Pakseresht was one of the participants of ‘Open Source Technologies for Disaster Management’ challenge.Her idea, called ‘NAJI’ has been selected as the winner of this challenge among almost 150 applications from a group of dedicated, exciting and motived young people from all over the world.

Sahar Pakseresht

So, What is ‘NAJI’? Naji (means savior in Persian) is a two part system, consisting of a bracelet that marks the user’s location and vital signs in a disaster, making rescue easier and a mobile application which streamlines requests for assistance from emergency personnel. It functions over a range of communication systems in order to make sure that it continues to function when needed, by switching from data to phone to SMS to USSD as needed.

What does NAJI do in details?

She says: “I faced the earthquake when I was 15 years old. It was the most horrible things in my life, I saw myself too close to death. I was wonder how to overcome to this fear and save lives of human with the help of technology.” Sahar wrote, “If I can save the life of one person then my mission is done successfully. Once I heard about this competition I found out that this competition is the way that I was always looking for to reach my goals.”

Both winners of this Challenge will attend ITU Telecom World 2014 in Doha, where they’ll benefit from seed funding, mentoring sessions, workshops, networking and showcasing opportunities before a high-profile audience from across the ICT ecosystem.

Nazanin Daneshvar is the CEO and the Founder of Takhfifan and has more than 12 years on experience in E-commerce field, Working in Europe before Takhfifan and getting to know this business model made her to think about starting the same thing in Iran. So basically after customer validation and development they launched the site in 2011.

Nazanin Daneshvar(left), the founder of Takhfifan

Staring with two people( Nazanin & Negin, her sister) by then, now they are over 60 people in HQ and other cities and they have grown organically without any investment so far. They were recognised as the best entrepreneur in 2011 and Got the award of the best Group buying website in the following years.

Takhfifan has now more than 10000 merchants working with her and continues to grows and expands to different regions and areas. Nazanin Daneshvar, the CEO believes today is the time that all the businesses should move online to continue marketing and old marketing ways don’t work any more.

Takhfifan has developed their mobile application from the first year and offering all the deals and information online. They also added the functionally called “Takhfifan just now” which customers can buy and use the coupons straight away.

Takhfifan group along the way came to the need of having a reviewing platform and they started Tarinan.com on 2012 which is a free review and local search platform. Has been quite successful and the mobile app would be launched soon.

Finding a woman entrepreneur in IT with a running business is not easy in Iran and Nazanin Daneshvar is a good example of one. She owned Meydoonak.com couple of years ago which was the first Iranian Online Grocery shopping and has years of experience in e-commerce inside and outside of the country. She really believes in Entrepreneurship and loves all the challenges in this way.

Note: This guest post is Written by Maryam Ansari, Maryam is an Iranian author, project manager and translator. She obtained her B.A. in Persian literature from university of Tehran and is now studying her M.A. in French literature. She believes in translation as a means for progress. She is currently focused on Ladybug, a project to encourage women’s presence in the tech scene. You can follow her on Twitter or Connect her via Linkedin.

Ladybug (“Kafshdoozak” in Persian) is a project that seeks to encourage, empower and prepare a generation of Iranian women who will be enthusiastic about and active in different technological fields. It delivers this mission through the following steps:

Campaigning
To inform men and women of the gender gap that exists in the tech field, Ladybug publishes articles and interviews on a regular basis. By highlighting the achievements of successful women in spite of this gap, Iranian women will have role-models to look up to.

Training
Members in Ladybug Club are provided with online courses on a variety of tech-related subjects. Ladybug also host workshops to train women with necessary skills on entrepreneurship, creative skillsets, web and mobile design, programming, etc.

Support
Ladybug members and trainees will benefit from a professional network through which they will be able to form circles, start their start-ups, promote themselves as freelancers or apply for job interviews. In the long term, by coaching, mentoring and fund-raising, Ladybug aspires to help women in their personal and professional growth.
The vision is to balance the workforce in Iran and equip women with the inspiration and support they need to fill half of the positions in the flourishing IT industry. Ladybug seeks to fill the gender gap that exists today by insisting on the presence of women, not separating them from men.

The story of Ladybug
Two years ago, the autumn of 2012, was when the Idea of ladybug occurred to its founders. As the world of internet and tech has been male-dominated in Iran as in many other countries, they have always perceived the absence of women in the tech scene. While surfing the web, they came across Ladygeek, a project that sought to increase the part women play in technology. They searched further, there were a handful of other inspiring projects and organizations with the sole goal of encouraging women to choose and pursue tech. They thought “why not us? Why not Iran?”

Then began their quest to identify the problems that prevented Iranian women from equally participating in the tech scene. Ladybug was the solution they prepared to right the wrongs. It took them 6 months to develop an operational plan and form their team. The first webpage was launched on June 2013, then started the campaigning that attracted the attention of the press as well as the public. Then Ladybug Club was developed in the following months: primarily a LMS that allows members to study an online course, pass the exams and receive the course certification. The Club (beta version launched on June 2014) helps Ladybug unify all of its objectives in one place, as features like “support” and “professional circles” will be added. Now, in the summer of 2014, Ladybug is hosting its workshops, while keeping in touch with its fans and members via newsletters, Twitter, and Facebook.

Along the way, there were many volunteers and well-known IT specialists that helped and advised the team, promoted the project, accepted to train the members and are continuing to do so. The team and the members of Ladybug are grateful for all their help. Let us hope that one day, everyone in Iran web scene will contribute to this project by their whole-hearted support, if not by their time and energy.