PillSorted is a Pharmacy providing NHS services, blending compassionate care and innovative technology to deliver a truly Personal Pharmacy service.

KPV Energy Alpha develops, builds and runs solar power plants in parts of the world that need them the most. Why? Because solar is not only clean and safe but also THE cheapest form of power generation.

Led a flagship €XX* Million JV agreement from initiation to completion between a major multinational beverage company and Solico. Achieved valuation of tens of millions of Euro resulted in successful part-exit for investors as well as shares in the JV. Negotiated sophisticated legal agreements navigating local and global complex issues applying creativity and problem-solving. (* name and amount is not announced in public domain)

Solico Group is one of the most interesting entrepreneurial stories of the contemporary Middle East. Established in 1975 it employs more than fifteen thousand people across several countries and is still run by the founding chairman. Recently, “Kalleh”, the flagship dairy brand of the group, rated as 48th top global food brand by Euromonitor. This regional multinational continues to operate like a start-up company and maintains its entrepreneurial spirit. My assignment began with designing and managing a restructuring program sponsored by the founding chairman to organize and prepare the company for the future competitive environment. “A company to last for the next 50 years and beyond.” Being an entrepreneur, I made a firm commitment to ensure that we wouldn’t destroy the innovative spirit of the group while at the same time trying to create an organizational structure. This turned out to be an intellectually challenging endeavour – tough but extremely exciting.Following thorough analysis, I created a roadmap to rationalize legal entities and made ERP implementation a work-stream to organize the restructuring program around it. We put together a stellar team of twenty-five analysts, who were carefully selected from more than 250 interviews and mentored by world-class, experienced veterans from global FMCG companies. We reviewed and re-engineered all processes across all functions, including Finance, Supply Chain, Planning, Production, Logistics and Procurement. We researched the structure and business processes of the global industry leaders and embraced the very best business practices. I have led the team to achieve some key milestones, such as going live in the main company of the group (more than five hundred users across several ERP modules: FICO, PP, MM, WM), but the Solico Group’s restructuring program will continue to be a story in the making for the next few years.

Kontainers is a cutting edge ocean freight platform currently serving some of the biggest brands in shipping.

The idea of offering free photobooks sponsored by advertising was born in my entrepreneurship class while undertaking my MBA in Maryland. The willingness of my professor to write a personal check was encouraging enough for me to share the idea with my friend Shervin Pishevar, now a prominent venture capitalist who has invested in hot-shot companies such as Uber. Shervin and I co-founded HotPrints, with special support from Bobby Yazdani, the great entrepreneur and mentor who even has Google in his angel investment portfolio. We raised the seed round and established the company in Cambridge, UK. I built a solid team and in less than one year we produced a platform to create photobooks, either for multiple social networks (Facebook, Ning, Bebo) or our mobile application for the iPhone. This was 2008, when Facebook was not the leader of the social networks. Users could create a photobook using their photos on social networks, and our global network of fulfilment centers would then print and ship them free of charge. Our platform was fully scalable based on Amazon Cloud and could absorb all traffic shocks with ease, as we experienced when we were featured on Good Morning America (the television show)! Techcrunch, Lifehacker and hundreds of blogs featured our service, and we shipped more than 150,000 books to 147 countries. I am extremely proud of the HotPrints team and the lessons I learned while working with them. I got to work and meet with the best of Silicon Valley and, thanks to the sharing culture of the Valley, every exchange made a lasting impact on me (pitching to many prominent VCs, including Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, or meeting and getting advice from seasoned entrepreneurs such as Omid Kordestani, Mohsen Moazami, Michael Abbott, Sepandar Kamvar, Sherry Coutu, Pejman Nozad, Ro Choy and Kate Burns).

Think of Axprint.com as the Shutterfly or Snapfish of Iran. We started the idea of printing photos online in 2000 when Internet penetration in Iran was minimal and there was no e-commerce infrastructure to speak of. In the absence of credit/debit cards, we even printed our own gift cards with scratch codes (Axcard), which we distributed in grocery shops. The team showed extreme tenacity, pushing the idea persistently over time. As the Internet and DSL become widespread, Axprint’s user base grew while the portfolio of the product expanded to photobooks, calendars, wall-décor and much more.After the first few years in my operational role, I have been privileged to continue to coach and mentor the gifted team at Axprint as a board member, advising them on both product and marketing strategies.

I founded the Tuba Design Studio in Iran when I was 19 years old and studying Engineering at Sharif University (known as the MIT of Iran). After raising a small amount of equity in 1997, we changed its name to PDHCO and established the first digital printing company in Iran. Very soon the design studio turned into something of an incubator. Every few months we thought of a new idea and quickly transformed it into a new business. Here are some examples: Advertising and Marketing Strategy Consulting, Digital Agency and Website Design, Software Development, Digital Printing, Publishing, Packaging Design and Production, Outdoor Advertising, Customized ERP/MIS development, Database and Direct Marketing, Wallpaper Border Manufacturing, Online Printing and E-commerce.It was an extremely exciting time in the post-Iran–Iraq war era. After eight years of war, the market was enjoying some stability and was thirsty for anything new. In a short period of time, I learned all the aspects of running a business, including hiring, firing, accounting and cash-flow management, running the production shop-floor, cold-calling and pitching to sell, managing a sales team, customer service and support, negotiating complex legal contracts and, last but not least, how to persuade people, even if I was the youngest person in the room with the least experience. We grew quickly from two people to sixty employees, serving thirty thousand customers and generating annual sales of $3 million.