Iran Fara Bourse unveiled The Crowdfunding Directive

The details of the crowdfunding directive which was ratified by Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) a few days ago is now publically announced by Iran Fara Bourse (IFB) which is the executive arm in implementing the directive and will be in effect soon.

In this directive it is affirmed that an agent which is a legal entity and has launched a platform is responsible for getting the necessary permits for the equity-based form of crowdfunding from the evaluation taskforce so that he can raise funds for the registered projects which leads to applicant and investor (loss and profit) partnership; Through this platform business financing in its primary stage or in the development phase must be done.

The very taskforce has a secretary and five members one of which is representing the SEO chair and the rest are IFB representatives and financial experts.

Notably, the project which is going to be financed through the Iranian form of crowdfunding ought to be implemented in Iran but this does not apply to the investment source.

In the very directive, it is stated that evaluation of the applicant and its project, signing a contract with the applicant, attaining a specific symbol from IFB, announcing the applicant specifications, the requested amount, clearing procedures, fund-raising time-table and then actually fund-raising are crowdfunding procedures.

According to this directive, maximum cap for raising funds through a CF platform is 20 billion rials, the applicant shall bring 10% of the required fund in the first place, CF platforms can have no more than 200 billion rials worth of open projects and a real entity cannot invest in a specific project more than 5% of the total provided finance.

This directive is announced after the meeting which was held this month at Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture in which IFB CEO elaborated on crowdfunding explained the different types of crowdfunding. Later on, he mentioned that the equity type of crowdfunding is the selected type at this stage and foreign investors can also invest in domestic projects through crowdfunding platforms.

All in all, the plan to promote knowledge-based products and helping startups with their financing needs is in the implementation stage now as they are better achievable applying crowdfunding potentials this time in Iran capital market.