Iran’s Islamic Azad University will open next year an R&D center at Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow. The two sides agreed at the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation (IASP) conference, which took place earlier this week in Moscow.
The partnership encompasses several technology fields, including energy, oil and gas and medicine.
A private University headquartered in Tehran, Islamic Azad University has campuses and research centers across the country and abroad.
“We expect this agreement to open new opportunities, primarily for our participant startups,” said Nikolai Grachev, head of Skolkovo’s energy cluster, who signed the agreement together with Ebrahim Vasheghani-Farahani, vice president for science and technology at Azad University.
“We are acquiring a strong partner in Iran for the promotion of new technologies. For companies working in key designated areas, this will simplify their entrance onto the Iranian market,” said Grachev.
Conversely, Grachev hopes that “Iranian companies will find it interesting to exchange their experience with us and enter the Russian market with our help.”
Russian oil giants Gazprom Neft and Lukoil have both expressed an interest in taking part in the development of Iranian oil deposits, and Russia’s atomic agency took over the construction of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, which opened in 2011 near the city of Bushehr. The Russian side is a joint operator of the plant.
A Skolkovo delegation visited Iran at the beginning of this year.
Russian businesses in the running
Several other Russian investors are eyeing Iran’s tech markets. Among them is billionaire Vladimir Potanin, whose PE and VC fund Winter Capital Partners (WCP) has recently acquired a stake in Pomegranate. This Swedish company actively invests in Iranian digital assets via Sarava, a leading Iranian VC firm.
Among Pomegranate’s early backers are Russian businessmen Andrey Muravyev and Boris Sinegubko, which invested a few million dollars in the company last year, as reported by East-West Digital News.
Thus these Russian businessmen indirectly hold shares in DigiKala, Iran’s largest e-commerce company, as well as leading classifieds sites Divar and Sheypoor. Sarava is also a shareholder of Café Bazaar, Iran’s main Android marketplace, Pomegranate told East-West Digital News. In addition, Pomegranate owns directly stakes in Carvanro, Iran’s first online ride-sharing service, and in Griffon Capital, a newly formed Iran-focused investment and advisory boutique.
Digitizing the Islamic revolution archive
Acoording to recent Russian media reports, telecom magnate Yevgeny Roitman has plans to introduce the Glonass technology in Iran, while ABBYY, a major Moscow-based software company, has suggested to digitize Iran’s National Library and the Islamic revolution archive.
Mail.ru Group, a leading, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, is “engaged in a marketing investigation and research” of the Iranian market, as East-West Digital News reported earlier this year. Young Iranians have shown great interest in ICQ, an international messenger service that belongs to the group.
Meanwhile Yandex, another leading Russian Internet company, has declined government invites to enter the Iranian market.
