“Startups Run by Youths Providing Iran with Multimillion-Dollar Incomes”

Sattari says a large number of the emerging startups are established by Iranian elites living outside the country.

“For the time being, startups instead of universities serve as the largest platform for attracting Iranian intellectual assets abroad,” he said, according to Tasnim News Agency.

He described the intellectual assets as the fruit of the hard efforts made over the past three to four years and said the government has successfully pressed ahead with its project to prepare the ground for startups’ operations.

For a brief review of Iran’s achievements in various fields of science and technology, check the book “Science and Technology in Iran: A Brief Review”

“In these efforts, we tried to keep distance from governmental mindset. We have come up with ideas on how to turn knowledge into economy or to link research to economy. We have gained victories and failures in turns. At the end, we managed to develop good models for business and technology parks,” he said.

Iran’s Vice-President for Science and Technology also said today’s businesses are totally different from the old ones.

He said the government is ready to share its experiences and models in this field to encourage big enterprises to make further investments in knowledge-based areas.

He finally expressed the hope that Iranian startups would further develop at global standards.

In a recent statement, Sattari had said that knowledge-based enterprises in Iran gained over $450m by exporting their products to international markets last year.

He added Iranian startups and knowledge-based companies, despite being young, have achieved global standards for exporting drugs to Russia and European countries.