Pomegranate has been able to establish a unique position as one of the first international investors in Iran’s consumer internet space and is committed to the transfer of know-how and management experience in all the investments.
Our investments include:
Digikala Group is the first, largest and leading e-commerce company in Iran which is active in various categories of Retail, Marketplace, Fashion, Digital content, and Online Supermarket. Digikala now offers more than 8 mn SKUs on its sites with over 231,000 sellers on its Marketplace. The marketplace strategy transformed the company into world class E-commerce player.
Digikala’s growth strategy is inspired by the likes of Amazon and Alibaba in China, adjusted to an Iranian context. Category expansion into FMCG and food delivery products has been successful with its online supermarket now offering over 130,000 items, the most diversified selection in the country. New ongoing projects in Social Commerce, Cloud, DigitalAd and Payment solution offer exciting further opportunities to grow the brand and business.
Digikala Group’s GMV has been growing significantly in recent years. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for Digikala’s net sales has been +100% over the last decade.
Café Bazaar is a leading consumer internet company in Iran that runs the largest local Android application marketplace for Persian speaking individuals around the globe.
Over 40 million Iranian users have installed Café Bazaar’s application on their phones. Of this figure, more than 0.5 million users live outside Iran. Café Bazaar is monetizing its appstore and the company maintains its market share at about 85-90% percent.
Also, users have access to a great variety of video content such as movies and TV series on Bazaar website. Currently, some well-known video content providers such as Filimo, Namava, and Digitoon are active on Bazaar.
Café Bazaar Group also owns 100 percent of Iran’s largest online classifieds company, Divar. Divar has been the most downloaded app from Café Bazaar. It has an active presence in 60 cities of Iran.
Alibaba Group is a leading online travel group in Iran holding the largest market share and the highest Alexa ranking among Iranian online travel agencies, with a leading position in online domestic travel. Online travel is a large and high-potential market in Iran where Alibaba has built a strong position with a high level of brand awareness. Alibaba continuously strives to use the latest technology to offer the best customer experience in its sector.
Alibaba Group, among other, manages the following brands and services:
Alibaba: An online travel agency that offers flight, train, bus tickets, and tours.
Jabama: A hotel booking website for local and international hotel reservations.
Sheypoor offers a general classifieds platform, with a focus on certain key classifieds verticals. Monetisation through selling value added services have started with encouraging results and is growing year-on-year. For the broad population the services remain free of charge, a particularly important feature in these tough economic times, and the re-use of goods also makes perfect eco sense. Liquidity on the platform is always important but Sheypoor is now especially focusing on quality of listings and users etc while being cost conscience and smart about marketing and campaigns.
Sheypoor is developing its product and managing its operations on the basis of the vast and deep experience from successful international peers that sit in the network of Pomegranate and its shareholders.
Griffon is an Iran-focused financial group providing Asset Management (Capital Markets & Private Equity) as well as Investment Banking Advisory. Griffon’s platform consists of a high calibre team with deep local market expertise and international financial pedigree blended at the board, management and execution levels. Griffon is also distinguished by unmatched local research and primary thinking and a governance culture defined by global best practices in risk management, compliance and reporting.
Griffon has recently sucessfully strengthened its local asset management offering, catering to the avalaible pools of money in Iran, which are less susceptible to international headlines.
Bahamta offers a simpler and safer alternative to traditional card-to-card or account-to-account P2P transfers through user friendly mobile based solution.
The company has five products live, targeted at different segments of the market. The initial four are all taking a small fixed fee per transaction. The company also recently launched a payment solutions for enterprises which is monetised through a percentage fee of the total transaction.
Navaar is a Spoken-Word Entertainment production and distribution platform. Navaar provides audiobooks, summary of the audiobooks, audio-dramas and audio-series. Their web and mobile apps offer audio content (for both adults and kids) in an easy-to-navigate catalog, the biggest of its kind in Iran. Navaar’s has recently also launched podcast streaming service with included advertisements.
