Chances are you have seen many sellers who sell various products on social networks or virtual platforms advertising or ad publishing platforms. Yet, the most important barrier for trade in these platforms is generation of trust between buyers and sellers. Tazminchi is a trade enabler in social commerce that attempts to fill this gap and create a trusted framework for buyers and sellers to trade products and services.
Founder
The startup Tazminchi started operations with Hossein Moradi’s idea and investment from the No-avaran Javid accelerator. Hossein Moradi, the founder of Tazminchi and CEO of the Javid Group, was born in 1982. He completed his bachelor’s in agricultural engineering at Islamic Azad University and is an MBA graduate of the Sharif University of Technology. He is currently pursuing his DBA in entrepreneurship at the University of Tehran.
Starting Up, Quarantine, and Remote Shopping
The idea behind the launch of the startup Tazminchi started with the founder falling sick to COVID-19. Hossein Moradi tells:
“In March 2020, I wanted to purchase a rare and luxurious tool, but due to having contracted the coronavirus I couldn’t personally leave the house. I started searching on Iranian and foreign websites but couldn’t find that tool on any websites. With further search, I found it for sale on Instagram priced at 50 million Tomans and in the City of Shiraz. Neither the seller was willing to ship the product before collecting the payment, nor was I, as a buyer, willing to pay this price without receiving the product. In the meantime, I started searching for a service or an app for guaranteeing transactions, but I couldn’t find any. As a result, I had to send someone to Shiraz to purchase the tool on my behalf.”
This event first sparked the idea of founding Tazminchi. Then, the idea was shared with No-avaran Javid Accelerator’s Investment and Innovation Group. After two months of research and analysis, research for launching this startup was initiated in June 2020 and the application was launched for the public on November 29, 2020.
Payment: Main Concern of Two Parties in a Transaction
Due to online fraud, the remote purchase is stressful for buyers and even the sellers. Identity verification, method of payment, and product quality assurance are the buyers’ most important concerns when shopping on social platforms or other remote purchases.
However, the concern regarding payment of the purchase price is not limited to the buyers. Sometimes, the seller ships the product to their customer, but the buyer takes advantage of the seller’s trust and does not pay the purchase fee after receiving the product. When the distance between buyer and seller is short, this problem can sometimes be solved with an “in-person” payment scheme, but both sides’ worries are magnified when shopping across longer distances.
Logistics
Having confidence in payment is not the only problem in a transaction. Sometimes, the buyer and the seller agree upon and complete payment, but the item’s shipment, tracking, and delivery to the customer are not performed well. Since the seller must cooperate with delivery companies for shipping the product, the item is occasionally damaged or not delivered to the customer within the allocated time.
Post-Purchase Harassment
Sometimes, after the purchase, people can bother and harass one another using their phone numbers. This is a known cause of concern for those people who are not willing to share their phone numbers.
Tazminchi’s Solution: Ease of Mind
Tazminchi has created somewhat suitable solutions for all three of these problems. and is expanding these solutions in various technology-oriented ways.
Secure Payment and Quality Assurance
Tazminchi provides a secure payment platform for generating confidence between buyer and seller. In this way, after registering a purchase order and making the payment, the fee remains in Tazminchi’s escrow until the buyer receives the product and confirms their satisfaction with the product or service. For added confidence in this issue, Tazminchi picks up the seller’s item and evaluates the item’s quality on the buyer’s behalf right at the seller’s place of origin.
This feature of Tazminchi ensures that every user of the social network is confident in their purchase — regardless of whether they are making a small or large purchase.
Receipt and Delivery of Item
Demand for the delivery of items is high across the country, but services offered by delivery companies are often not of high quality. Hence, whenever possible, the logistics of receipt, tracking, and delivery of items are performed by Tazminchi itself; yet Tazminchi leverages other delivery companies for delivery to parts of the country which they do not have direct access to.
Safe Contact
Tazminchi’s solution for reducing bothersome contacts or other ways of causing problems by people involved in purchases is to create a safe contact medium without displaying people’s personal phone numbers. This way, the buyer would not have the seller’s phone number and this will create peace of mind for the seller after the purchase.
Peace of Mind in Transactions
Tazminchi’s most important value proposition for both parties of a transaction are “to do business with peace of mind”. The seller who uses Tazminchi is confident in receiving their payment and can provide tracking options to create a better customer experience for their buyer. On the other hand, the buyer who uses Tazminchi is confident of the payment, quality of the product, and on-time delivery of the product.
Still, Tazminchi’s value proposition is not limited to buyers and sellers. This startup can provide value for the government as well. With this platform, transaction tracking makes it possible to reduce legal problems and fraud, and where investigation by legal entities and the FATA (Iran’s Cyber-Police) is needed, all documents pertaining to transactions are available.
Product
Tazminchi is a unified platform for enabling remote shopping. Identity verification, secure payments, quality assurance, and logistics all take place in a unified platform so that the sides are confident in the deal. Similarly, to ensure customer satisfaction, all items have an option for returns up to 12 hours.
Tazminchi’s product manager Amir Eslami states:
“Many people who trade on social platforms see Tazminchi as a symbol similar to the electronic trust symbol (eNAMAD) for social networks.”
One feature of this product is the management of orders for buyers and sellers in a way that the buyers can track their orders at any stage and if they wish to repeat their purchase, they can do so without re-entering their order information. Conversely, sellers can track and manage the products they sell.
Similarly, quality assurance can be specialized at the customers’ request. For example, in the trade of a cell phone, quality assurance would include checking the physical health of the phone and that the phone turns on; but at the customer’s request, the device can be analyzed in a more specialized manner.
One of the features of phone support of Tazminchi is assistance for people who are not familiar with technology media. Incalls with the support team, those people such as the elderly who cannot make their purchase on their own, Tazminchi assists them and completes their purchase. The wallet is another of the services of Tazminchi and which allows people to collect their refunds.
Business Model
Tazminchi earns a fee of 40 thousand Rials for transactions below 2 million Rials, and for orders in excess of 2 million Rials up to 490 million Rials, Tazminchi earns a fee of 2% of the purchase price up to a cap of 3 million Rials. Logistical services do not produce income for Tazminchi and are solely provided in a unified platform for customer satisfaction and as a support service.
Shipping Partners
For its logistics system, Tazminchi currently uses other specialized platforms such as Tipax Courier Services, National Post of Iran, etc for picking up and shipping purchase items.
Tazminchi has no competitors yet in areas of secure payments, quality assurance, and identity verification for remote shopping — and especially for shopping on social networks.
Future Objectives
This startup’s main plan is to expand its logistics system to cover Iran’s entire land. Currently, Tazminchi’s fleet contains 40 motorcycles and 20 trucks for deliveries within Tehran. Tazminchi’s objective is the expansion of its center for receipt and delivery of items to 155 distribution centers in Iran by the end of September 2021.
Tazminchi’s future plans include, among others, the implementation of smart contracts, an independent payment gateway, direct bank withdrawals, deposit collection services, an independent blockchain network, and providing credit limited to the purchase of valuable items.
Challenges Ahead
Tazminchi’s main challenge is the possibility of censorship of international platforms and social networks such as Instagram. If these platforms are censored by lawmakers, many businesses will face challenges.
Another important challenge of Tazminchi is in logistics management. In many instances, pickup or delivery of items must take place in areas of the country that are only within reach of the National Post of Iran, and there are no alternative options but to outsource the deliveries. Outsourcing carries the risk that the estimated delivery time — even when set by a Service-Level Agreement (SLA) — is delayed in action.
Tazminchi Summed Up in Numbers
Tazminchi has over 10 thousand active downloads from Café Bazaar and, according to the startup itself, it has over 35 thousand users who use its platform through its WebApp and on the iOS operating system. Similarly, over 1600 stores have partnered with Tazminchi.
Item pickups take place in all of Iran’s provincial capitals, and 15 of Tazminchi’s distribution centers serve to receive and deliver items across the country.
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