TEHRAN- In a meeting held at the place of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA), representatives of private sector met Amir Hamooni, the CEO of Iran’s over-the-counter (OTC) market, known also as Iran Fara Bourse (IFB), who elaborated on crowdfunding instruction, its requirements, mechanisms, etc.

At this meeting, IFB CEO explained the different types of crowdfunding, like reward-based, equity, debt-based and donation-based which later he mentioned that the equity type of crowdfunding is the selected type at this stage, IFB Public Relations Department reported on Wednesday.
According to the instruction, maximum amount eligible to be raised through an equity crowdfunding campaign is 20 billion rials and a company must turn into a public joint-stock one plus get the necessary permits if it wants to raise more.
Hamooni added that helping startups and knowledge-based firms with their financing problems are one of the purposes of launching crowdfunding platform and all companies including the ones interested in sports, art, and movie making fields can benefit from crowdfunding for their project financing.
The CEO continued to elaborate on the process of draft instruction approval. He noted that beginning from June 2015 more than 30 taskforce meetings were held in the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare with the presence of delegates from Vice Presidency for Science and Technology, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance, Central Bank of Iran, Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), accelerators, investment banks, and the police.
Also, SEO committee for the Formulation of Regulations meetings in which delegates from Anti-Money Laundering Committee, Iran Fara Bourse, Division for Supervision on Financial Institutions, etc. were present held for the purpose of discussing draft instruction which eventuated in the instruction approval on May 2018.
SEO and IFB are not going to add to the red tape and they will play their surveillance role in just the platforms affirming stage, Hamooni emphasized. Notably, according to the instruction each platform cannot have more than 200 billion rials (about $4.76 billion) unfinished project simultaneously and the applicant himself must finance as much as 10% of the project.
Finally, the CEO mentioned that foreign investors can also invest in domestic projects through crowdfunding platforms.

MA/MA

PHOTO: IFB CEO Amir Hamooni (C) speaking in a meeting on crowdfunding at the place of ICCIMA