Vice President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy of the Presidency considered the sale of shares of large start-ups to other companies as a sign of the maturity of the digital economy and emphasized that there is no external pressure on startups for this to happen.
According to Iran digital economy annotation, Rouhollah Dehghani Firouzabadi emphasized the sale of Tapsi’s shares to Golrang, and emphasized that the Scientific Vice-Chancellor was initially against this and after the insistence of Tapsi’s owners, he agreed to facilitate this process. He said that the only condition of the scientific vice-chancellor was that they morally commit to reinvest the money that comes from the sale of shares to the previous owners in the digital economy.
Firouzabadi denied the existence of pressure to sell shares of startups and said: “Unfortunately, when some people say things in bad times, I fully give the ecosystem and the media the right to feel that this (sale of shares) has something to do with what was said.”
He added: During the purchase of Tapsi company by Golrang, Mr. Monshipour (CEO and part owner of Tapsi shares at that time) came to me and asked us to help him do this. Why? His analysis was that if I want to grow and do new things, I need the tools that Golrang has bought. If these are put together, a new digital economy giant will be formed. With the opposition of the scientific vice-chancellor at the beginning and making a condition, the agreement was finally made.
Vice President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy of the Presidency continued: Ask yourself if someone told you to do this in the case of Digikala? The only condition we have set is that you make a moral commitment to reinvest the money you get from selling part of the shares in an emerging ecosystem such as artificial intelligence.
Firouzabadi said: When it is announced in the world that a certain company was bought by Nokia or Meta, no one says why it was bought. This is a sign of maturity that the ecosystem is reaching a space where capitalists or elders related to the economy of this area enter.
Firouzabadi explained about his position regarding the sealing of some businesses last year: I had two editorials in this field. The first was a strong defense that businesses should not be sealed off. This was the position of the president, the minister of communications and my servant.
He added: The second edition was also about this, when a debate was raised that the digital economy and startups have a cultural and moral problem.When you enter the ecosystem, for example, the pharmaceutical ecosystem, their gender is different from the knowledge bases that work in the digital economy. Why? Because part of the digital economy money entered the country with a foreign flow. My suggestion was that if you have a problem with this, create a competitor for them. The solution is to give a chance to the authentic trends that accept Iran, Islam and the revolution to compete. The way is not to close them; But some people who are unrelated to this field took positions that poison the atmosphere and imagination.
The vice president of science, technology and knowledge-based economy of the presidency continued: We raise this as a challenge [call for the battle]. We say don’t close the business. If you say there is a problem, go support revolutionary and Islamic thoughts and create competition. Can the government spend money and build Digikala? This does not make sense.
monitoring the migration of elites
Firouzabadi explained about monitoring the migration of elites and the discussions about this project: All those who report about migration have undocumented statistics. We want to monitor immigration and the only place that has the statistics of leaving the country is Faraja. We don’t want to stop anyone from leaving.
Gazal instead of unicorn
He also said about the creation of unicorns and “gazal” in the field of digital economy: having many unicorns requires infrastructure, one of them is venture capital, which countries like us, Germany, or even Korea do not have such capital. On the other hand, we have companies that are small but growing well. It means that our criterion is growth instead of size.
Firouzabadi added: We have 800 technological companies in the country, all of which have the capacity to be gazal. We have a program that has been started for several months and 100 companies have been selected from these technology companies, and we can say that these are Iran’s gazals. I hope that 10 of these companies will be introduced to the public by Khordad.
Regarding the classification of knowledge-based companies in the new term of the administration of this vice-president, the Scientific Vice President also said: In the new term, we have classified knowledge-based companies not based on their technologies, but based on their financial turnover and specialized employment, and we support them on this basis.
He continued: Based on this category, we have more than seven thousand “new” companies, two thousand “innovative” companies and 800 “technological” companies.
Firouzabadi predicted that the number of start-up companies will increase by a thousand with the mechanisms defined this year.
15 thousand billion budget
Dehghani Firouzabadi also explained about the budget of the Scientific Vice-Chancellor: In 401, it was approved that the equivalent of 15 thousand billion Tomans from the oil export site would be allocated to the Vice-Chancellor to invest in propelling and job-creating projects. Unfortunately, the circular for this work was not issued, and at the end of Esfand last year, the meeting of the heads of forces approved it and it was included in the current year’s budget.
He added: this year seven thousand billion tomans and next year eight thousand billion tomans will be allocated from the oil field, which will be invested in 26 projects with the cooperation of the scientific vice-chancellor, the relevant government agency and a consortium formed in that field.
Artificial intelligence operator
The President’s vice president for science, technology and knowledge-based economy regarding artificial intelligence and the program of this vice president said: Last year, many conversations and interactions were held in order to form a national center for the development of artificial intelligence and a steering council for artificial intelligence. We examined various models from other countries and during dozens of hours of meetings with experts in the field of artificial intelligence, we came to the conclusion that we should have a national center of artificial intelligence whose work is monitoring, regulation, etc.
He said: In Esfand of last year, the National Artificial Intelligence Center was established and the members of the National Artificial Intelligence Steering Council were introduced, several meetings were held with state investors and large funds of the country, and the formation of an Artificial Intelligence Development Fund with an investment of 10,000 billion was planned.
Dehghani continued: Many operational works have been done and the National Artificial Intelligence Center will create an artificial intelligence operator in the first step, which will provide the three main services of AI as a service (AIaaS), large data centers and large computing libraries, and other companies They use these services.
At the end, Firouzabadi expressed hope that we will have access to several hundred GPUs by the end of the year.
No Comment! Be the first one.