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.