Focus on foreign exchange earnings and team performance

Keshmoon is the market of a nearly luxury product named Saffron which isn’t of household consumables and necessities.

But in 1397 we could retain our growth by optimizing the process and focusing on identified capacities in the market.

One of the capacities in 1397 was that despite of increased market turmoil, providing high quality products became harder and Keshmoon replied to the needs of this part of the market by making a trustworthy process for providing products with especial quality.

Another issue of the past year was the significant decrease of the value of our money. We did fundraising in Bahman.

This fund was injected in five steps, but the value of last funds injected into Keshmoon had been decreased significantly; this means that our operational power couldn’t progress as scheduled.

We have plans to grow

Although the year 1398 is going to be a hard one, Keshmoon has plans to grow even more; Our strategy for the next year would be product diversification in domestic market.

We introduced a new way of purchasing in online space; direct purchasing from the farmer. Farmers who are verified and their products are guaranteed by quality control processes

Although economic problems have made a big part of the market to produce low quality and cheap products, but Keshmoon would choose a reverse way.

Our focus would be on retaining and improving the quality and making prices proportional to quality.

Also the English part of Keshmoon that sells the products to end consumers in Europe, would continue with more power.

In fact the plan is to make a way for farmers and Keshmoon so that they can earn income in Euro.

We want farmers who sell their products in Europe through Keshmoon, receive the value of their Saffron in Euro.

Fundraising in 1398

Also next year Keshmoon will fundraise. Good growth in 1397 has provided the perquisites for this fundraising and we have started initial negotiations by different investments inside and outside Iran and we have received positive signs.

Based on evidence we have seen so far, I don’t agree with this expression that fundraising would be hard in 1398. There are always innovative ways for fundraising.

For example, Keshmoon has used crowdsourcing with big blocks (high payments) to gain its seed capital. In this process, Iranians outside Iran also participated and it went very well.

Focus

Another issue is about costs and managing costs related to human resource and office and …. According to the selected growth strategy for Keshmoon, the plan for attracting human force and office costs would continue as before.

At the end I think focusing on better quality, focusing on creating foreign exchange earnings, focusing on optimizing the processes and improving team performance are of the most important things that a startup should do for the next year.

Make sure to read this interview with Keshmoon Founders.