Conference on Iran’s opportunities in the digital age, looking for lost opportunities

The first conference of Iran’s opportunities in the digital era (IDEAS) was held this morning at Milad Tower conference hall with the presence of digital economy activists. A conference that has been planned for a year and wants to make available the lost opportunities of the digital economy and talk about the relationship between the digital world and the traditional world.

In this conference, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, a member of the faculty of Tehran University, spoke about the dual life of Iranians in today’s life. According to him, the two effects of civilization are being organized and advanced: “In the past, all civilizations differed in three serious dimensions: place, time, and the communication network of people. But after mass communication devices, the form of communication changed, and when the smartphone came, we all participated in the digital space as well as the physical space. Our people have become two lives and carry digital and physical life together, but the organization and governance is still a single life. The ruler must clarify the future path, and it is the duty of all of us to resolve this ambiguity in the right way in order to turn the historical turns in time.”

Farshad Fatemi, a member of the faculty of Sharif University, started his speech by presenting an image of economic growth in different decades and said that economic growth was high before 1955 and after that there was still moderate growth in the economy for many years, but the 90s of the decade What is missing is the growth of Iran’s economy: “Before this decade, the growth of the economy was based on the fact that we could distribute resources more cheaply between different industries. During that period, we used oil and water resources recklessly for agriculture and industry, and we had cheaper manpower than the rest of the world. As a result of this issue, Mahem’s companies were growing. But that growth is no longer there. If we want to reverse this trend, we have to go to the fact that growth comes from productivity and productivity comes from technology.”

According to him, we had inflation before the 90s, but because the economic growth continued, we could continue to survive. But now the growth has stopped and only inflation remains: “There is no other opportunity in macroeconomic figures. “Even if we consider the scenarios of opening the economy, the regulator deregulates and there is rationality in the policy, growth has stopped.”

Fatemi believes that one reason is that loss-making companies are not allowed to go bankrupt, and their heavy burden is on the shoulders of the entire economy: “However, in the 90s, the digital sector of Iran’s economy was born, which is growing increasingly and uses less physical resources. And it should be paid attention to. But on the other hand, the politician is monogamous.”

Then, Ali Divandari, a faculty member of the University of Tehran, said about the financial services industry, the unicorn will not be achieved by just targeting, but the way of thinking must be changed: “The financial services industry is an unknown ocean, but all our technologies are gathered in the payment industry and at the production level. we are stuck While we have to move towards innovation and then reach technology and science to find a place for ourselves at the international level.”

According to him, startups and fintechs are the glimmer of hope in this era, but they are not played because of their small size. At the same time, the economic logic of their work is in the hands of the regulator who does not understand them properly.

Pointing out that the big banks have huge capital, he said: “70% of the banks’ resources are spent on working capital, 15% are spent on obligations and loans, and 10% are spent on personnel, and only 5% are left to spend on economic development. become a country “We are not using the resources properly.”

In the continuation of this section, Milad Manshipour, the CEO of Tapsi, talked about the company’s experience in entering the stock market and the regulatory problems in this field. He pointed out that those reviewing the financial statements for the listing did not know what to do, and it took a year and a half to monitor them: “So a new standard was developed for the recognition of digital assets. From the president to the ministers, the prosecutor, the secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace and the head of the stock exchange, they were the decision-makers in the startup’s entry into the stock market. The number of decision-makers, the lack of rules and standards, the resistance of managers to accept new concepts and their low risk tolerance are the reasons for the complexity of startups entering the stock market.

Valiullah Fatemi, the founder of Tosun Holding, said of greenhouse regulation as a model for regulating innovative companies and startups: “The regulator must be familiar with the risks of the digital economy, and the innovator must be able to solve the risks of the regulator’s mind. The greenhouse space allows the innovative company to operate in a limited space, generate data, and that data becomes the basis of the regulator to regulate the space. After trial and error, the company will be allowed to leave the greenhouse and enter the public space. During this time, he learns how to manage crises and proves himself to the regulator.”

Referring to the statistics of 45 billion payment transactions, Mohammad Mazaheri, the CEO of Tosun Techno, said that more than 90% of these transactions are done in shops or service supply places. He also pointed to Digikala’s annual statistics, in which the total share of Anlan’s retail sales is 4%: “That means 96% of people’s shopping style is done in a different way than the rest of the world. E-commerce is different from digital business. “Digital business has not come to destroy the physical economy, but it is a world added to it.”

Mazheri spoke about integrated stores and emphasized that the platform view in the digital economy causes productivity and innovation. Another issue in his view was data: “Invoice information is not in transactions. If the invoice is to be buried inside the shop, it is not worth it, but if it is in the cloud and is used in marketing and knowing the customer’s tastes, it will both optimize and reduce the cost of goods and services. If digital technology goes into the store, the size of the basket will be bigger.”

11 meetings are scheduled to be held in this two-day conference. These meetings are held in the areas of regulation, digital money, scalability, human capital, digital transformation, data and artificial intelligence and their impact in various sectors such as banking, insurance, health, environment and art and entertainment. It was also announced in this opening that at the end of this conference, a platform called IDEAS will start working.