Energy Innovation Center, energy accelerator

Iran’s startup ecosystem has created a new space, but in the same space, veterans and old people are also working.

One of these people is Roozbeh Shahrokhi, who is currently the CEO Energy Innovation Center Is. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in entrepreneurial management from the University of Tehran, and is in the right place according to his field of study. accelerator Includes research institutes, science and technology parks, and startups. Follow Accomotive’s conversation with him:

How did you get into the startup ecosystem?

The story goes back to my undergraduate years, according to what was in our society at that time, what our generation dreamed of was engineering or medicine. We had learned that our dream was to study engineering. I was studying engineering and I was working at the time. I was the technical expert of a company that imported air conditioning systems such as chillers, fans and air conditioners from Italy.

The management there realized that I was doing better in sales, and I became a sales expert and then a marketing and sales manager. Coincidentally, I went to the Pardis Technology Park in 1990 for a project by a pharmaceutical company. Before that, I did not know what space the campus park had, and after doing that project, I got acquainted with this space and decided to change my major and study management. During a conversation with a friend, I decided to study entrepreneurship management at the University of Tehran.

I also quit my job. I studied intensively for three months and passed the daily Entrance Examination for Entrepreneurship Management at the University of Tehran and entered this space. I was always looking for learning so I was active and searching. While consulting with several marketing and sales companies, I decided to enter the field of startups. And I got into the startup ecosystem that was just starting to take shape in those days.

For example, I participated in various events and networked, I met Ahmad Reza Masroor, who was the CEO of Dimond Accelerator, and for several years as Mentor I worked in Dimond. I was assessed as a manager risk fund in the investment fund. Later, I was a consultant for the commercialization of emerging technologies at the Ibn Sina Research Institute in the field of health and biotechnology. Give me.

I put this interest into the startup ecosystem because the startup ecosystem had a big advantage, and that was that it met my needs, I needed to be where I felt I was going to be, and that impact was to help talented people. I still pursue the same value and this is what makes me overcome the challenges and difficulties of this path and have the motivation to cross it.

What is energetic and how was it born?

The Energy Innovation Center is the first private innovation center in the field of oil and energy, launched by the renowned holdings Dana Energy, Pasargad Energy Development and also the investment of the oil industry by Apadana Ventures. The CEOs of the three major holdings are members of the board of Apadana Ventures, the first VC in the oil and energy industry.

The three CEOs decided to create such a VC, and the first project of this VC is the Energy Innovation Center, which was established to accelerate the startups in this field and to provide technologists and industrial companies in this field.

That is, energetic works first as an accelerator and finally leads his teams to VC?

The Energy Innovation Center is not just an accelerator, we are doing acceleration work, but our goal in energy is bigger and our main goal is to solve the challenges of the oil industry by entrepreneurs in the country. That is, on the one hand, we present the technological needs of industrial companies with an open innovation approach to domestic technologists, and on the other hand, to companies. Knowledge base And technology that has a product or service helps us to be able to offer their product or service to the industry or raise capital.

The biggest advantage of the Energy Innovation Center is the rich network of key people, managers and investors in the oil field that we have access to here. Our vision is that the Energy Innovation Center is an innovation club in the oil and energy industry. This innovation club has two members: one is the innovative members, which we briefly call knowledge-based companies, technology and startup teams, and on the other hand, we have industrial members and they are industrial companies.

To date, seven industrial companies are our members, Petro Daniel Kish, Cylinder Drilling Kish, Petro Kariz Omid Kish Company and Sina Industries Group, Sina Petrochemical, Pasargad Energy Development Group, Dana Energy Company and Isfahan Machine Building. There are also other holdings that are going to be members of the Energy Group, and we are a bridge for these companies. That is, the Innovation Club is such that we serve both industrial members and innovative members. Our center is a place of effective communication between the oil and energy industry and domestic technologists.

What is the energetic roadmap for attracting, nurturing and injecting talent from the university?

Our activity in this field is significant. If there are challenges and there are companies that have been formed for it, we welcome them. We help them in team building and acceleration. This is the reason why we are based at Amirkabir University.

Last year, we had more than 2,100 hours of online training and we are trying to introduce the university to the industry.

These courses were free for the audience, and industry-renowned professors shared their experiences with the audience. On the other hand, with the coronation situation that has arisen, we have made every effort to employ and hire industry, companies that are our shareholders, staff and academic talent.

We are in touch with their human resources unit as well as the university to connect them so that they can attract their human resources from new members who have graduated from different fields and disciplines. We also hold events between industry and academia to inform students about the existence of such companies in industry and to see what opportunities there are for internships and work to join these companies, and we have created a space where they can enter this space and with knowledge-based companies that There are to communicate and talk.

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Given that you have a mentoring experience, what should the mentors of this space have?

Sometimes mentors, migrants and consultants are confused in the ecosystem. The definition of each of these cases is different. Counseling from a person who has theoretical knowledge and expresses it or conveys experiences he / she has had. A coach is someone who may not have the expertise in the subject and who has not gone that way. Stand by those people and create a dynamic atmosphere for him to be able to see this path much more clearly and find his path better.

The coaching debate is also very important, but more importantly, the mentor is the person who has taken this path. There is a mentor who is aware of the practical challenges that exist and shares his experiences. When we say specialized mentoring, it means a mentor is a person who, if it is a football field, is playing on that field with that team. A coach is a person who stands on the field as a coach and the consultant may not be on the field on this field and be among the spectators.

The mentors we look for and for the teams that are here are people who have worked in the industry for 20-30 years. In different executive positions, they are completely familiar with the process that takes place in the industry and share all their knowledge and experience with these friends. Usually, people who are mentors do not want to make money from mentoring. Most are looking to be able to share their experience, and they see this as their social responsibility.

These people want to pass on this experience so that someone else can grow up with them. Our view is also mentoring.

Did you mention education, is energy education specialized or in the direction of entrepreneurship?

Both are oil and energy debates and light and labor debates Education we have.

Is your path in line with the knowledge that exists in the university or does it take another path?

Our effort is to complement the value chain, that is, not to run parallel to academia nor parallel to industry. We have tried in cases where we deem it necessary to fill this gap between academia and industry. The latter age is the age of capability, and capability is equal to four components: knowledge, skill, ability, and motivation. My capability is zero.

Knowledge I learned at university What might happen if I had three doctorates? But on the other hand, if I have the skills, the abilities and the competencies, and if I have the motivation, I can say that I have the ability in the present age.

Most of our effort here is to be able to transfer knowledge and skills that are complementary and that are not in universities and textbooks. Transfer people’s experiences, learn more skills and be able to develop skills in the space they are in. For example, in our event, as in many other places, we teach effective presentation skills and put people in a position to present.

Before that, various mentoring is done to reach this stage. First, technical mentors discuss how to present it and become familiar with the challenges. We do our best to complete this whole process and focus on university and industry chat.

Tell us about your development plan in Energetic:

At present, more than 20 knowledge-based and technology companies and industrial companies are our members. Our focus is to be able to increase the confidence of industry and domestic technologists day by day and to hold an event to provide more output-driven technological needs in order to solve the challenges of the industry by domestic technologists.

Our next plan is to have a continuous acceleration program in line with the growth of teams in the fields of new technologies, support management, equipment and parts, chemicals, specialized platforms and software, digitalization in the oil and energy industry. In the discussion of refining, distribution and renewable energy and electricity, as well as in the oil industry, attract anyone who has an idea. Enter them into the acceleration process or investment do.

Do you have any advice for friends at the beginning of the route?

I was studying a subject several years ago and I was talking about one of the characteristics of an entrepreneur who I call the Internal Control Center. My suggestion is to read more about this. Entrepreneurship has a feature called the Center for Internal Control, which says that people who are entrepreneurs (value creators) see themselves as the creators of external circumstances, they may not be to blame for what happens outside of them, but they always feel responsible.

It is not like they condemn themselves and fall victim to conditions that are outside the prevailing conditions. Conditions get tougher, such as a corona pandemic, economic conditions get tougher, and yet they see themselves as the creators of external conditions and do not despair. They continue, they build. Because in despair, the person who becomes frustrated becomes passive and does nothing else.

But it is precisely the entrepreneurial and value-creating people (entrepreneur means value-creating) who are the creators of external conditions. What I learned years ago, and all I try to do, is look at my outside world with the same mental model. Many times we may not be to blame for something, but we certainly did.

We could have realized before this happened and done something about it, and I can say that now is the time when we can all hope, do our best so that the hope of the elite in our society does not fade so that we can Grow businesses.

In order to be able to make constructive suggestions to the governing departments to move these things forward and their activities to be more productive, and not to look at events passively and to look at synergy and construction and to work hand in hand, because if we want to look at the space of innovation ecosystem And technology is like body parts that are connected.

If a member does not work, or a member prefers personal growth and development to collective growth and development, it acts like a cancer cell, and that system is disrupted and the whole system collapses and does not grow. My vision is for everyone to think about collective growth and development, and not just to think that our company or startup will grow. Let’s look at the other benefits of ecosystem components that may grow in this ecosystem that affect our work, and this allows the ecosystem space to grow as well, which allows me to look at the situation and build constructively.