The story
Founded by Hamid Mohammadi and Saeid Mohammadi on Jul 1, 2006, in Tehran.1
Digikala was founded by the brothers Hamid and Saeid Mohammadi, prompted by an unpleasant experience they had trying to buy a digital camera. The pair used $10,000 of their own savings to start the company. The company's valuation was $150 million in 2014 and $500 million in late 2015. As of 2021, more than 4 million products have been offered for sale by nearly 160,000 sellers. In 2021, the platform had 30 million visitors per month and 17.2 million visits per day. In May 2022 it was ranked as Iran's 2nd most visited website.
Digikala has benefited from the Iran's increasing digitization. By 2017, 62% of Iran's households were connected to the Internet and this development has driven demand for Internet services that mirror Western digital platforms. The company does not publicize its revenue, but has said sales are growing at a rate of 200% a year, and that it is receiving orders from even the most remote villages in Iran.
Iran's economic volatility forced Digikala to lay off 175 workers in 2018. To survive, the platform adopted several initiatives such as a pay-per-sale strategy which allow users to receive a commission if a directed customer purchases a product. In March 2019, Digikala also addressed the issue of author authenticity of products in the platform after receiving complaints over the quality of goods being sold. In a statement, the company claimed that only 0.2% of the 2 million products sold were unoriginal and that the company has taken steps to implement stringent quality control.
From Wikipedia’s article on Digikala, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4