Simiroom users demand the highest level of quality

Iranians abroad are a very attractive market, but it is not easy to reach them. Simia Service Group is one of the businesses that specifically targeted this group and is now focused on Simiaroom service.

Simiarum facilitates access to mental health specialists for Iranians abroad and plans to provide the same service to immigrants from other countries so that they can contact their fellow countrymen. The following text is a part of Ecomotive’s interview with Alireza Tawakli and Mehdi Kotbi, co-founders of Simiarum, which was prepared with the aim of getting to know more about this collection.

How was Simiarum born?

Simiarum was formed from the heart of a bigger idea called Simiaservice. Simia Service was launched in 1991 with the aim of providing services to Iranians living abroad. Simia service includes various services, including Simia Surprise, which provides gifts and planning surprises by expatriates for their families in Iran, the service of sending cultural and artistic products from Iran to other countries, and Simia Administrative, which handles administrative tasks. Follows up people living abroad in Iran.

Because quality was important to us, in the first 2-3 years, the only service provided by Simia Service was Simia Surprise. During this period, we established strong relationships with Simia Surprise users, and this trust made users request us to provide other services.

During the communication we had with the users and the feedback we received, we realized that most of them needed Iranian consultants in their city. To answer this need, we launched Simiaroom. Due to the great popularity of this service, Simia focused on this online psychology service.

What topics does the consultation in Simiarum cover?

Simiarum’s focus is on mental health. In this field, we focus more on one-to-one and P2P counseling, which includes psychology and psychiatry in the general category, and couples, family, pre-marital, child and adolescent, parenting and individual counseling in the specific categories. It includes such as anxiety and depression.

Is Simiarum’s audience limited to Iranians abroad??

About 10% of our clients are Iranians inside Iran; Because they are looking for quality therapies, so our approach is not only for Iranians living abroad. Audiences abroad, because they have received high quality services, expect high quality from us. For this reason, from the beginning, we tried to provide high-quality user support and quality services.

What channels do you use to reach these contacts?

We have created many digital and non-digital channels in these years. In the beginning, we used digital channels such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, etc. Then we got help from collections that are active in this field abroad. In some cases, we cooperated with businesses that had similar audiences, such as Dariche Cinema, which screens Iranian films in cinemas abroad.

Do you have a competitor that offers a similar service to the same audience?

There is no competitor that only focuses on Iranians abroad; But there are platforms that have expanded their activities abroad. Since our main focus is on the high quality of counselors and therapists, as well as the high quality of system support, I don’t think we have a competitor in Iran at this level of quality.

How competitive is Simiarum’s 35% share of the service price?

Often, the share of websites is between 20 and 50 percent of the service price. Of course, consulting centers that operate offline and face-to-face even consider up to 60% of the service price for themselves.

Domestic competitors may take this percentage less for a limited time due to financial support, but a platform needs to receive this percentage to remain stable; Even in the ecosystems abroad, they receive a percentage in the same range.

How did consultants cope with your platform model?

The value that we provide to service providers should be such that it attracts them to cooperate with the platform. Consultants on our platform are not only consultants and many of them are also our mentors; Because they know the field of mental health better and even help us in product design. On the other hand, we try not to be the only one connecting users to consultants and provide more values.

We mainly build this system with the help of others, and one of the important issues for our consultants is to bring the country’s mental health environment to standard conditions with professional content. We are a small speaker to transfer their knowledge, so the spiritual concerns of both of us are on the same side, that’s why we didn’t face the unwillingness of the consultants to cooperate.

Why is the number of active consultants in Simiarum less than similar service providers?

Simiroom is a closed platform and we choose the consultants. In Simiaroom, unlike other platforms, advisors cannot engage in it during the initial evaluation; Since 90% of the results of therapy depend on the knowledge and experience of the counselor, that’s why we are sensitive in choosing counselors.

We also have many requests for cooperation from consultants, but we hold evaluation meetings for all consultants and most of them are not accepted. Often, those who cooperate with us, we ourselves go to cooperate with them.

How do you choose consultants?

When the counselors apply for cooperation with Simiarum, after reviewing the resume, they must pass 2 interview sessions with a jury consisting of several therapists, which is a general interview stage and a specialized interview stage in the consultant’s field of activity; Then, for 2 months, the activity of the accepted consultant will be examined in order to get a better understanding of the quality of his work, and after that he will become a member of the permanent therapists of Simiarum.

Does the evaluation of consultants continue after recruitment?

Yes. Because the high quality of advice is our goal. Simiroom’s supporters constantly receive feedback from users; On the other hand, since the consultants are as sensitive as we are, quality is always taken into account. We are an intermediary platform and the client has referred and trusted us first. For this reason, we consider continuous evaluation as one of our duties.

He has experienced the acceleration and attraction of capitalIodine?

Our business started with personal capital. After some time, for 1 year, we got help from the services of Samsung Amirkabir Technology Center; Then we reached an understanding with Amen Investment Company and attracted capital, which made us achieve very good growth in the last 6 months.

How did the process of attracting capital from Amen go?

We entered into negotiations in Azar 1998 and the process took 3-4 months. It took time because of our sensitivity in choosing investors. At that time, we were negotiating with 3 investors, and choosing an investment that would pave the way for us to progress more quickly made the process of choosing an investor a little longer.

Why didn’t you start attracting capital earlier?

A year before this incident, we were planning to attract capital; But Simiarum was in the early stages of growth at that time and high valuation was not considered for Simiarum; For this reason, in 1997 and 1998, we carried out the work with personal funds and in one year we experienced a 600% growth in sales and reached the stage of attracting capital.

How has your growth been after attracting capital? What effect did Corona have?

The goal that we had in mind after attracting capital for this year was about 500-600% growth compared to the previous year. Currently, we are a little far from this goal, but we hope to achieve it within the next few months. The outbreak of Corona caused more attention to be paid to the field of digital health, and this field became more attractive for collections and companies, but at the same time, the competition became tougher.

Apart from providing capital, what value has Amen created for Simiarum?

When an investor enters into cooperation with a startup, practically everyone is in the same group with a common goal, and the success of that business is the priority of both parties. For this reason, the support of an investor includes things like consulting.

Since the investor is in contact with many startups and is aware of legal and corporate challenges, the advice he provides cannot be valued. I think every mature investor offers such support to businesses in addition to financial issues, and we have also received such support from Amen.

What are your plans for development?

Our goal is to raise the level of mental health in society, and our first priority is Persian speakers. We are looking for another type of service with the aim of providing mental health services with lower costs.

We have also designed a number of products that are sometimes close to implementation and some of them require technological infrastructure, so when they reach the unveiling stage, we can explain more about the details. In the next year, we plan to connect the immigrants of other countries to the advisors of their own countries.

What advice do you have for people who want to get into digital health?

In my opinion, the need of our society is not the only issue of access to mental health services, because we have many counseling treatment centers and counselors in the country, but the mental health of our society is not in a good condition due to the low quality of services.

Even low-quality consulting sessions make people frustrated, so the main task of startups is to solve more serious problems than to be only a connector between consultants and clients. Finally, the value they create should create a change in society. The quality they have in providing services will make them successful in the field of business.

What people can help to make good things happen in Simiarum?

Since Simiaroom is designed for Iranians abroad, it may be economical for them to use consultants abroad, but the cost of our services is high for Iranian residents. For this reason, we tend to cooperate with groups that are active in the field of mental health in order to provide these services at lower costs for the residents of Iran.

We try to reduce part of our income to increase access to quality services, but if charity funds and non-governmental organizations are willing to cooperate with us, we can solve these problems with each other’s help.