The problem
The same phone or washing machine can sell at widely different prices across Iranian online stores, and with international players absent from the Persian-language search market, shoppers had to grind through store after store manually to find the best deal.
How it works
Developed by Ali Babaei in September 2014 and launched online in mid-April 2015 (“Torob” means horseradish in Persian), Torob aggregates product listings from thousands of Iranian online stores into one searchable catalogue. Shoppers search once and compare prices, technical specifications, images and seller links side by side, with an email service that tracks price changes on items they want.
Pain points
Steep price dispersion between stores, unreliable sellers, missing or inconsistent technical specifications, and the sheer time cost of manual comparison shopping.
Business model
Two-sided discovery economics: free price comparison attracts millions of high-intent shoppers, and revenue comes from the seller side — listings, prominent placement and referral traffic to stores.
Challenges
Preserving shopper trust (neutrality) while sellers pay for visibility, keeping a catalogue of 6M+ products across 12,000+ shops fresh and accurate, and holding the lead against the older rival Emalls as big retailers push their own apps and direct channels.
Funding
No publicly citable funding rounds found; funding fields omitted rather than guessed.