Iran Plans to Launch Special Bank for Knowledge-Based Companies
According to the vice presidency report, attracting funds has been one of the problems that knowledge-based companies have usually been grappling with. Usually, when these companies request a loan from the banks, they must provide a guarantee or collateral to the bank. The reason for requesting a guarantee on the part of the bank is to make sure that the company can afford repaying it. The collateral must be in the form of assets such as land or building documents, and other properties of that kind.
Moreover, start-up companies do not usually have enough assets and may not be able to provide the requested guarantee to the bank. In the meantime, most of assets of knowledge-based companies are intangible assets, including intellectual properties, intellectual capital, etc. Also, valuation of intangible assets usually would face hurdles.
To tackle the problems faced by the knowledge-based companies, Rouhollah Dehghani Firouzabadi, the Vice-President for Science, Technology and Knowledge-Based Economy, announced the formation of a specialized bank and insurance for knowledge-based companies and their products and services.
“We are trying to obtain approvals and permission in order to set up a venture bank or specialized bank for knowledge-based companies and entrepreneurs in the field of technology,” Dehghani Firouzabadi said.
According to vice president, the bank is supposed to provide capital for knowledge-based companies through the valuation of their intangible assets.
Saying that the knowledge-based ecosystem in Iran has already reached maturity with about 10,000 companies, he added, “There are very good grounds and capacity for providing capital and financing the technology, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem by a knowledge-based venture bank.”
He added that the bank will open with a capital of at least 100 billion Tomans each year.”
Dehghani also announced the formation of a specialized and risk insurance for knowledge-based companies to cover the risks faced by such firms.
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