Introduction
Iran, that country up to no good in the dodgy neighborhood called the Middle East. While I've lived in the UK most my life im of originally Persian decent and a few years ago I went to Iran to invest in the startup scene thinking post JCPOA it's a good investment arena. Naturally there was a huge culture shock for me coming to terms of their business style and mindset which I will explain for everyone here, trust me you'll want to read this.
Iran unlike many realise, is quite a rich country, not just in history but in wealth, while it may not show on GDP figures, Iran is actually the only country that's genuinely ripe for investment, this isn't an advertisement but a general consensus amongst most economists, it has a young population who are educated and an aging infrastructure, no real foreign debt, very little local debt (Iranian banks don't really loan much money to the people), huge reserves of mineral oil and gas to underwrite any kind of investment, little foreign competition, a population who are business savvy and generally affluent, on avg price per meter of a property in Tehran is nearly $1,400 for something VERY basic, if you want something chick you're looking at upwards of $3-10,000 psqm. At one point Iran actually had the most porsche's in the entire Middle East, while the country charges 100-200% tax on foreign car imports so do that maths
)
The country unfortunately has many issues, apart from bad governance and ridiculous laws, but a major obstacle is the sanctions on Iran which makes competition in the country nearly non existent, basically if you produce anything in Iran it's likely you're going to be your only competitor, most foreign companies while drooling to get a market share in Iran are too scared due to the political risk which is completely understandable.
The simcard market
One of the first culture shocks I had in Iran was the need to appear succesful, weather it's your car, location or your phone number. It's a sad fact that you will be ridiculed in affluent groups if you own a bad phone number, thus making the simcard market in Iran very hot for buyers and sellers. A number 0912 111 xxxx will cost at least $20,000 and can go as high as $1 million, 111 representing you being #1, ridiclous to normal people I know but that's how it is in this culture. Naturally you'd think there's only 9999 of these numbers which btw sell within minuites on the market, but a 0912 1xx xxxx number also costs at the very least $1,500 which again sells like hotcake if priced well, these numbers can also go as high as $1 million. There is an entire site dedicated to this trade of phone numbers called rond.ir and simcart.com and a few others. Simcards in iran are almost like gold, investment which increases in value every year with inflation and some extra on top too, the number which may have no meaning to you maybe somone's birthday or engagement date which they would be happy to pay an arm and leg for.
Seeing this market, I thought well this is a market ripe for domain investment as domains can also be a peanacle of your brand, authrity and in turn reliability and wealth. I'll explain in the next section why i was kind of right and kind of wrong.
The domain name market of Iran
Introduction
So I went to Iran in 2016, while most European and American companies were flying there daily on chartered private jets to invest in Iranian startups, digikala.com being iranian version of amazon, snapp being iranian version of Uber and many more businesses. The market was flush with cash anyone investing upto $100,000 in random digital startup ideas, the domain name market was pretty untouched except for the odd domains like iran.com etc. the rest wasn't really invested in thus these startups had an easy time just snapping any names they wish for their brands without paying any premium.
A small group of people got a whiff of potential profit in the market and started buying alot of domains, by alot i mean a handful each owning 10-20,000 domains either .ir or .com's which meant the entire LLL.ir of Iran is currently bought most owned by one individual, most keyword .ir is owned by a handful of people and brandable keywords maybe owned by 200-300 people in a country of 85 million.
From the discussions I had with people about the 2016 era, I was told some became very wealthy from domain investments selling domains for upwards of $20,000 per sale / transaction on average. This may sound ridiculous to us seeing general sales of $3,500 on SEDO etc. but at the time Iran was ready to spend and there was investment capital ready to just splash around.
Then 2018 happened and sanctions hit the country hard, most investors left and the capital dried up, Iranian government entities took over many of the investments made by foreigners in the country with a different mindset, thus the domain market dried up. Try explaining to a guy who wants to see women forced to wear a hijab in Iran why you need to invest $20,000 in a domain name, they don't undetstand it because their not fit to run a company and were just placed there from a government level. The statup scene really suffered in Iran, further sanctions were placed on Iranian digital industry with Apple app store banning Iran, Google analytics banning Iran, Trump taking many Iranian .com domain names seizing them on a signature thus most Iranains turned to their local domain extension the .ir
https://www.nic.ir/Statistics shows there are over 1.6 million registered .ir domain names, in 2016 this figuire was probably less than 500,000 in 2020's during corona and the seizure of iranian .com domains this figuire jumped rapidly to the current number.
Most Iranians used to conduct business on Telegram, so a person would have a shop or service he would have a Telegram channel and post updates on the channel and it would act like his personal web page for his business / service, post the government ban on Telegram most Iranians moved to Instagram for this activity making Iran probably one of the most active country on the App, its not unsual to see Iranians with over 1M followers on instagram and influencers with over 10M followers within Iran, these are real followers as most Iranians spend most their day on this app and thus the need for a website wasn't really realised until today.
Current market
Further to the previous point of most small businesses using Instagram to conduct business in Iran, there has been a few laws passed and shift in policy within the country. Taxation of businesses is becoming an ever growing policy of the government of Iran due to lack of funds from sanctioned oil revenue and thus this Persian new year (March 2025) they will be implementing a strict tax policy specially on the digital space. Those small businesses who thought I don't need a website I can just trade under the radar and ask customers to transfer money to my personal account will now be penalised hence there will be a growing need to websites coming soon.
The government is doing a U-turn from it's previous policy on a digital Iran, it's investing in startups, forcing and encouraging government companies and private institutions to invest in the Iranian startup market and buying digital companies in order to bring about more efficiency and accountability within the countries economics. Many smaller startups are bing bought by larger holdings now and are rebranding with the boost of cash and extra holding power of group marketing within internal companies.
While I don't really have any commercial ties within Iran anymore, I still have a holding of over 2,000 .ir domains and .com domains for the market. I have seen a huge uptake in interest in buying these domains are quite competitive prices which i'll explain in the domain appraisal and sales section. I also know many of the domainers within the country and know of their recent sales and re-investments.
Avenue to sell a domain in Iran
There is generally 4 avenues:
1- SEDO / DAN / Afternic, these come with issues as iranians are banned on these sites thus may not see for sale lander, also most can't transact funds to these sites easily making them less likely to buy your domain name.
2- Self parking your domain, Hugedomains invests a great portion of their portfolio in Iran, because they know it sells, they have a large Iranian domain portfolio both in farsi domains and English .com and .net and self parking works well for them. (I have been in countless auctions with them on persian names like iransurgery . com on godaddy and won / lost for hundreds of dollars) I myself have parked my names on a simple lander page saying it's for sale to call or whatsapp this number which gets a good response.
3- Parking your domain on an Iranian parking site, there are few of these but rond.ir is probably the most popular one hosting over 40,000 parked domains and 250,000 domains for sale on the site.
4- Nam.ir which is an Iranian auction site for domainers who buy and sell domain names at reasonable prices (not cheap)
Value of Iranian domain names
This depends as Iranians have 2 markets, the dispora outside of Iran who may buy domains like persianrugs.com for $500,000 ( https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/42...h-Yashar-Zhalehdoust-who-sold-PersianRugs-com ) or the internal market whose sales will vary, i'll explain further below:
There are two category of Iranian buys of domains within Iran.
Retail - The small guy with an instagram page who wants a website, whose budget will vary from $250 - $10,000
Corporate - These guys will come for the big one work generic or brandable or best domains in guise of a small retailer to get the best price but are really flush with cash, can pay anywhere from $1,000 - 1 million $ for your domain.
So i'll show some examples of actual sales of each so you have a good idea.
I sold black friday . ir to a retail investor who was a taxi driver with a dream to own a online business, for $1,000 as i felt sorry for his situation having checked he really was a taxi driver earning the bare minimum.
Same month I bought A B R . TLD for $5,000 (via payment terms not all cash) from afternic (abr means cloud in farsi) and sold it for $10,000 just last month pending final payment of $2,500 to complete the sale to a personal investor who wants to start a cloud hosting service. This same person also bought sim . ir short for simcard from a friend of mine for $8,000 cash.
Corporate sales - digikala which is Iran's version of amazon rich in cash, bought its brand .app ( digikala . app ) as it launched it's own super app in the country for $xx,xxx
Iran Cell one of iran's biggest mobile providers is in talk to buy p a r d a k h t . ir which means payment in farsi for high $xx,xxx + the .com
There are some other huge sales which I really can't share here as even I shouldn't know of the real figuires but friends were kind enough to share the information.
What's the average sale like?
The average value for .ir domains are typically as follows:
LLL.ir without meaning selling for min $50-100
LLL.ir with meaning will range from $1,000 - 50,000
Generic keyword domain that is of value in Iran (e.g. mobile.ir sim.ir abr.ir server.ir rent.ir house.ir khodro.ir etc. are minimum priced at $10,000+)
Generic domains with limited value keywords for Iran will sell for about $200+
Names of men and women .ir sells for $1,000 min + depending on the name
Surnames .ir will sell for $200+ depending on how popular the surname is
Brandable words e.g. flightio for a flight site sell for min $1,000+ as many startups like these names
News worthy domains go big in Iran, so in the news buying gold online or gold that's been melted has suddenly become popular thus most gold related domains in farsi are suddenly sold out, ranging from $500-50,000 which i know was sold to a major gold seller.
What extensions are used in Iran.
This is a weird one! You'd think .com but Iran's government has put stringent policies on corporates to try and use other extensions incase of US seizures. So many companies use a .ir .news .app .pro .net .org .io; .com definitely still has it's place in Iran still but its unlikely a government linked / invested organisation to buy this domain and more likely a private individual will be interested / startup in it's junior stage.
What domains are good investments in Iran...
Look at the top Iranian startups and apps in Iran, digikala, Snapp, Snapptrip, alibaba... digi is a good keyword to use, digital, keywords like trip are also used often in the country for flights and tourism, complex keywords like review and compare etc. while may get traction it lacks general ability to type within the population thus will never sell for it's maximum price. Pars (persian), melli (national) are also good precursor for corporate related domains but invest wisely like in petro related domains, gold, or banks for those precursors.
Look for which areas in Iran is popular locally and internationally. Simcards, mobile phones are two cash rich areas within the country, areas like chabahar is being invested heavily by India in it's port. Lawyers is again an area where many have sites in the country and the keyword lawyer is Vakil in farsi (shares the same meaning as India), insurance (called bimeh / bime in farsi which is gradually coming digitized)
Just a word for the wise, I'm not trying to get anyone to invest in Iranian domain names .ir .com .net or any other name, I simply was out of this forum for a VERY long time came back thought I'll share a small part of my story here and it's something different and interesting, and it's a market that's liquid for those who have an appetite to take risk that's all.
Iran, that country up to no good in the dodgy neighborhood called the Middle East. While I've lived in the UK most my life im of originally Persian decent and a few years ago I went to Iran to invest in the startup scene thinking post JCPOA it's a good investment arena. Naturally there was a huge culture shock for me coming to terms of their business style and mindset which I will explain for everyone here, trust me you'll want to read this.
Iran unlike many realise, is quite a rich country, not just in history but in wealth, while it may not show on GDP figures, Iran is actually the only country that's genuinely ripe for investment, this isn't an advertisement but a general consensus amongst most economists, it has a young population who are educated and an aging infrastructure, no real foreign debt, very little local debt (Iranian banks don't really loan much money to the people), huge reserves of mineral oil and gas to underwrite any kind of investment, little foreign competition, a population who are business savvy and generally affluent, on avg price per meter of a property in Tehran is nearly $1,400 for something VERY basic, if you want something chick you're looking at upwards of $3-10,000 psqm. At one point Iran actually had the most porsche's in the entire Middle East, while the country charges 100-200% tax on foreign car imports so do that maths
)The country unfortunately has many issues, apart from bad governance and ridiculous laws, but a major obstacle is the sanctions on Iran which makes competition in the country nearly non existent, basically if you produce anything in Iran it's likely you're going to be your only competitor, most foreign companies while drooling to get a market share in Iran are too scared due to the political risk which is completely understandable.
The simcard market
One of the first culture shocks I had in Iran was the need to appear succesful, weather it's your car, location or your phone number. It's a sad fact that you will be ridiculed in affluent groups if you own a bad phone number, thus making the simcard market in Iran very hot for buyers and sellers. A number 0912 111 xxxx will cost at least $20,000 and can go as high as $1 million, 111 representing you being #1, ridiclous to normal people I know but that's how it is in this culture. Naturally you'd think there's only 9999 of these numbers which btw sell within minuites on the market, but a 0912 1xx xxxx number also costs at the very least $1,500 which again sells like hotcake if priced well, these numbers can also go as high as $1 million. There is an entire site dedicated to this trade of phone numbers called rond.ir and simcart.com and a few others. Simcards in iran are almost like gold, investment which increases in value every year with inflation and some extra on top too, the number which may have no meaning to you maybe somone's birthday or engagement date which they would be happy to pay an arm and leg for.
Seeing this market, I thought well this is a market ripe for domain investment as domains can also be a peanacle of your brand, authrity and in turn reliability and wealth. I'll explain in the next section why i was kind of right and kind of wrong.
The domain name market of Iran
Introduction
So I went to Iran in 2016, while most European and American companies were flying there daily on chartered private jets to invest in Iranian startups, digikala.com being iranian version of amazon, snapp being iranian version of Uber and many more businesses. The market was flush with cash anyone investing upto $100,000 in random digital startup ideas, the domain name market was pretty untouched except for the odd domains like iran.com etc. the rest wasn't really invested in thus these startups had an easy time just snapping any names they wish for their brands without paying any premium.
A small group of people got a whiff of potential profit in the market and started buying alot of domains, by alot i mean a handful each owning 10-20,000 domains either .ir or .com's which meant the entire LLL.ir of Iran is currently bought most owned by one individual, most keyword .ir is owned by a handful of people and brandable keywords maybe owned by 200-300 people in a country of 85 million.
From the discussions I had with people about the 2016 era, I was told some became very wealthy from domain investments selling domains for upwards of $20,000 per sale / transaction on average. This may sound ridiculous to us seeing general sales of $3,500 on SEDO etc. but at the time Iran was ready to spend and there was investment capital ready to just splash around.
Then 2018 happened and sanctions hit the country hard, most investors left and the capital dried up, Iranian government entities took over many of the investments made by foreigners in the country with a different mindset, thus the domain market dried up. Try explaining to a guy who wants to see women forced to wear a hijab in Iran why you need to invest $20,000 in a domain name, they don't undetstand it because their not fit to run a company and were just placed there from a government level. The statup scene really suffered in Iran, further sanctions were placed on Iranian digital industry with Apple app store banning Iran, Google analytics banning Iran, Trump taking many Iranian .com domain names seizing them on a signature thus most Iranains turned to their local domain extension the .ir
https://www.nic.ir/Statistics shows there are over 1.6 million registered .ir domain names, in 2016 this figuire was probably less than 500,000 in 2020's during corona and the seizure of iranian .com domains this figuire jumped rapidly to the current number.
Most Iranians used to conduct business on Telegram, so a person would have a shop or service he would have a Telegram channel and post updates on the channel and it would act like his personal web page for his business / service, post the government ban on Telegram most Iranians moved to Instagram for this activity making Iran probably one of the most active country on the App, its not unsual to see Iranians with over 1M followers on instagram and influencers with over 10M followers within Iran, these are real followers as most Iranians spend most their day on this app and thus the need for a website wasn't really realised until today.
Current market
Further to the previous point of most small businesses using Instagram to conduct business in Iran, there has been a few laws passed and shift in policy within the country. Taxation of businesses is becoming an ever growing policy of the government of Iran due to lack of funds from sanctioned oil revenue and thus this Persian new year (March 2025) they will be implementing a strict tax policy specially on the digital space. Those small businesses who thought I don't need a website I can just trade under the radar and ask customers to transfer money to my personal account will now be penalised hence there will be a growing need to websites coming soon.
The government is doing a U-turn from it's previous policy on a digital Iran, it's investing in startups, forcing and encouraging government companies and private institutions to invest in the Iranian startup market and buying digital companies in order to bring about more efficiency and accountability within the countries economics. Many smaller startups are bing bought by larger holdings now and are rebranding with the boost of cash and extra holding power of group marketing within internal companies.
While I don't really have any commercial ties within Iran anymore, I still have a holding of over 2,000 .ir domains and .com domains for the market. I have seen a huge uptake in interest in buying these domains are quite competitive prices which i'll explain in the domain appraisal and sales section. I also know many of the domainers within the country and know of their recent sales and re-investments.
Avenue to sell a domain in Iran
There is generally 4 avenues:
1- SEDO / DAN / Afternic, these come with issues as iranians are banned on these sites thus may not see for sale lander, also most can't transact funds to these sites easily making them less likely to buy your domain name.
2- Self parking your domain, Hugedomains invests a great portion of their portfolio in Iran, because they know it sells, they have a large Iranian domain portfolio both in farsi domains and English .com and .net and self parking works well for them. (I have been in countless auctions with them on persian names like iransurgery . com on godaddy and won / lost for hundreds of dollars) I myself have parked my names on a simple lander page saying it's for sale to call or whatsapp this number which gets a good response.
3- Parking your domain on an Iranian parking site, there are few of these but rond.ir is probably the most popular one hosting over 40,000 parked domains and 250,000 domains for sale on the site.
4- Nam.ir which is an Iranian auction site for domainers who buy and sell domain names at reasonable prices (not cheap)
Value of Iranian domain names
This depends as Iranians have 2 markets, the dispora outside of Iran who may buy domains like persianrugs.com for $500,000 ( https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/42...h-Yashar-Zhalehdoust-who-sold-PersianRugs-com ) or the internal market whose sales will vary, i'll explain further below:
There are two category of Iranian buys of domains within Iran.
Retail - The small guy with an instagram page who wants a website, whose budget will vary from $250 - $10,000
Corporate - These guys will come for the big one work generic or brandable or best domains in guise of a small retailer to get the best price but are really flush with cash, can pay anywhere from $1,000 - 1 million $ for your domain.
So i'll show some examples of actual sales of each so you have a good idea.
I sold black friday . ir to a retail investor who was a taxi driver with a dream to own a online business, for $1,000 as i felt sorry for his situation having checked he really was a taxi driver earning the bare minimum.
Same month I bought A B R . TLD for $5,000 (via payment terms not all cash) from afternic (abr means cloud in farsi) and sold it for $10,000 just last month pending final payment of $2,500 to complete the sale to a personal investor who wants to start a cloud hosting service. This same person also bought sim . ir short for simcard from a friend of mine for $8,000 cash.
Corporate sales - digikala which is Iran's version of amazon rich in cash, bought its brand .app ( digikala . app ) as it launched it's own super app in the country for $xx,xxx
Iran Cell one of iran's biggest mobile providers is in talk to buy p a r d a k h t . ir which means payment in farsi for high $xx,xxx + the .com
There are some other huge sales which I really can't share here as even I shouldn't know of the real figuires but friends were kind enough to share the information.
What's the average sale like?
The average value for .ir domains are typically as follows:
LLL.ir without meaning selling for min $50-100
LLL.ir with meaning will range from $1,000 - 50,000
Generic keyword domain that is of value in Iran (e.g. mobile.ir sim.ir abr.ir server.ir rent.ir house.ir khodro.ir etc. are minimum priced at $10,000+)
Generic domains with limited value keywords for Iran will sell for about $200+
Names of men and women .ir sells for $1,000 min + depending on the name
Surnames .ir will sell for $200+ depending on how popular the surname is
Brandable words e.g. flightio for a flight site sell for min $1,000+ as many startups like these names
News worthy domains go big in Iran, so in the news buying gold online or gold that's been melted has suddenly become popular thus most gold related domains in farsi are suddenly sold out, ranging from $500-50,000 which i know was sold to a major gold seller.
What extensions are used in Iran.
This is a weird one! You'd think .com but Iran's government has put stringent policies on corporates to try and use other extensions incase of US seizures. So many companies use a .ir .news .app .pro .net .org .io; .com definitely still has it's place in Iran still but its unlikely a government linked / invested organisation to buy this domain and more likely a private individual will be interested / startup in it's junior stage.
What domains are good investments in Iran...
Look at the top Iranian startups and apps in Iran, digikala, Snapp, Snapptrip, alibaba... digi is a good keyword to use, digital, keywords like trip are also used often in the country for flights and tourism, complex keywords like review and compare etc. while may get traction it lacks general ability to type within the population thus will never sell for it's maximum price. Pars (persian), melli (national) are also good precursor for corporate related domains but invest wisely like in petro related domains, gold, or banks for those precursors.
Look for which areas in Iran is popular locally and internationally. Simcards, mobile phones are two cash rich areas within the country, areas like chabahar is being invested heavily by India in it's port. Lawyers is again an area where many have sites in the country and the keyword lawyer is Vakil in farsi (shares the same meaning as India), insurance (called bimeh / bime in farsi which is gradually coming digitized)
Just a word for the wise, I'm not trying to get anyone to invest in Iranian domain names .ir .com .net or any other name, I simply was out of this forum for a VERY long time came back thought I'll share a small part of my story here and it's something different and interesting, and it's a market that's liquid for those who have an appetite to take risk that's all.
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