Archive

"Parsis are like tigers,” stated Jehaan Kotwal when introducing the session Tigers’ Den that was hosted by the youth wing at the global conclave of the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce (WZCC) in Poona on January 6, 2024. As explained the erstwhile global youth director, they could not use the domain name Shark Tank, the popular American television series where prospective entrepreneurs make a pitch hoping investors (Sharks) will finance them. For the WZCC equivalent they thought Tigers’ Den would be a good alternative. 

The three Tigers selected for the session were Naushad Forbes, co- chairman of Forbes Marshall, India’s leading steam engineering and control instrumentation firm, Sam Balsara, founder and chairman of Madison World and Madison Communications, and Mandar Joshi, a venture capitalist, corporate leader and strategy consultant. When Kotwal and the current youth director Rashna Jehani mistakenly addressed the three Tigers as Sharks, Forbes jested, "Call us bakras (scapegoats).” 

There were four venture proposals that morning, two by youngsters from Iran, one by a youth in the USA and another by an Indian. All of them were permitted a 12-minute pitch with 13 minutes reserved for responding to queries from the Tigers. 

In all, five youth from Iran attended the WZCC Pune conclave. "Since they feel isolated, the aim was to make them feel integrated with the global community,” explained Prof Farrokh Mistree of Oklahoma, USA who conceived the Iranian Zoroastrian Youth Network (IZYN) and referred to the "synergy between WZCC and IZYN.”

"To build connections with Iran would be great,” remarked Forbes. When he was president of the Confederation of Indian Industry they had opened an office in Iran. That was the time sanctions had been lifted. He offered to hire Iranian youth in Dubai depending on their skill sets.

Plucky propositions

Raynaag is the initiative of a four-member Iranian team that seeks to expand its scope as a placement agency, serving job seekers as also job providers. Two of them were present at the WZCC conclave: Radman Khorshidian, who identifies and invests in future business opportunities, holds a Master’s in industrial engineering from Yazd University; Roxana Iraji is a business analyst and business development professional from Yazd with over six years of experience. 

The services they plan to offer job seekers would start with counseling so that youth take up jobs most suitable to them, personalized training, securing jobs (including international remote jobs), and providing job security. For job providers they would facilitate talent discovery, conduct interviews and tests of prospective applicants, offer consultancy on human resource issues and contracting services to facilitate relations between the company and the workforce. Forming a coordinated, agile and expert work team is a costly and time-consuming process for companies that they hope to resolve. Their ultimate aim is to empower Zoroastrian youth and stabilize the community through economic opportunities.

The second proposition by the Iranian youth planned to renovate and repurpose historic houses in Yazd "to offer a unique tourist experience that includes both accommodation and an immersive exploration of the vibrant Zoroastrian communities in the region.” The presentation was made by Pedram Mojgani who has a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering with an MBA (Master of Business Administration) from the University of Tehran, Parisa Foroudian who is passionate about product designing, and Arezoo Gharibshahi, who is doing her MBA while working as a business analyst and running a family business pertaining to renovation of old buildings in Yazd. 

When people migrate to big cities for better job opportunities, old houses are often left without inhabitants. Since it is not permissible to demolish heritage properties, they feel repurposing such structures would create an ecosystem for tourists, scholars, families who want to experience Yazd culture and history. As Mojgani has a 16-room family property in Yazd, they want to put it to good use. According to their statistics, annually there are around 4.1 million tourists to Iran of whom tourists visiting Yazd number 4,70,000. Their expected share of customers is 0.5% or 2,500 customers each year.

"Holistic integration of spaces, resort amenities, restaurants would serve as a catalyst for generating employment opportunities for the Zoroastrian youth, thereby contributing to an overall increase in income within the community,” they are convinced. Their future plans include an ecological co-working space, allowing for health tourism, a museum for handicrafts, a shop for Zoroastrian artefacts… 

The logistics of supporting a business venture in Iran lying in a grey area, the Tigers urged them to do more homework and respond at length to a questionnaire sent to them. After studying their detailed responses, the Tigers would explore possibilities to financially assist/invest in their venture. 

Yet another enterprising Zoroastrian was Kimiya Shahzadi of Michigan who wanted to promote her dating app, Love Story. Owned exclusively by her, the app will offer "matchmaking service for finding and keeping love based on science.”  While Love Story will endeavor to find partners for interested members of the Zoroastrian community, her second business is a real estate company, currently owning six residential units. 

Her presentation mentioned how her app with trained artificial intelligence (AI) would be able to determine preferences and match compatible individuals. "The structured, scientific approach” is meant to help people discover what they want in a marriage, help them identify the partner while "teaching them the skills to have a thriving relationship.” According to Shahzadi’s research there were 337 million people across the globe who used dating apps in 2022 of whom 57.44 million were in the USA. "Barring one, there is no app exclusively for Zoroastrians. On an average you need 3,960 swipes (sliding the touchscreen of one’s gadget to see variable content) to get into a relationship. After all those efforts, 70% of relationships are known to break up in the first year,” she revealed. 

Her app will include a Google form that takes an hour to fill. Through her app, she is hoping individuals find life partners in one hour as versus a search that lasts six hours a week for eight months. She considers the Tinder app that connects potential matches her biggest competitor. 

Joshi who has invested in a similar matchmaking app, TrulyMadly, jested that if her app is successful, once all Zoroastrians get married, she will be out of business! Balsara and Forbes showed a willingness to support her venture "not for economic gain but for social reasons,” as stated Balsara. 

Yet another business venture that needed funding was Mehery Smart Conversations, a social media messenger aggregation platform. As explained Kershasp Carnac, founder and chief executive officer of the two-year-old company, they aim to serve as "the entity that provides a singular platform to monitor a customer’s behavior and its business engagements (both online and offline).” Expecting to be in demand by businesses like airlines and insurance firms that have a greater retail focus, they would employ "AI toolkits alongside human analytics to provide proactive actionable next steps to engage and address an issue or complete a commercial transaction.”

With 40 customers in six countries, Mehery offers a customer engagement platform to retail and consumer businesses through BOTs (short for robots, these computer programs simulate human interaction), conversation tagging, campaign management, a human interface and an open API (Application Programing Interface) for third party integrations.  

When Balsara sought to ascertain Mehery’s core competency which would have an advantage over its competitors, Carnac responded that "the market is huge” with place for another 50 players, Balsara stated, "The race is to be the largest; those below will close down.” Joshi wondered whether AI will take over what they are doing. Carnac admitted that "AI will disrupt but how much is a matter of conjecture.” While commitments for funding did not come instantly, Joshi offered hope, "We will keep in touch.”

Mentor Hormazd Charna who had assisted the upcoming entrepreneurs to formulate the outlay and costing for their business proposals for the Tigers’ Den session recalled the period when he started his entrepreneurial journey in 2019. Participating in a Tigers’ Den session, he got support from Nadir Godrej, chairman and managing director of Godrej Industries, which gave the erstwhile corporate and investment banker the necessary confidence to venture out. "People are scared to leave their job,” observed Charna, founder of MergerDomo, an online global platform that helps mid-sized corporations sell and raise funds via their algorithm-based (a mathematical process for solving a problem using a finite number of steps) system. 

Admitting that this exercise is "nerve racking for the participants,” Kotwal asked, "Why are we doing this?” before proceeding to answer, "Hopefully we’ll spawn new million dollar businesses… We have amazing entrepreneurs in different corners of the world willing to support and mentor. Thank you to all the Tigers.” He further acknowledged how "WZCC has helped me get a lot of business, a lot of customers.” Steering JFK Transporters Pvt Ltd to become one of India’s safest transportation services, his latest social venture, Good Mind, leverages AI to save over 100 lives daily in road accidents.

The fifth instalment of the global conclave report will be carried in a forthcoming issue of Parsiana.