Cafe Bazaar

Cafe Bazaar (Persian: کافه بازار‎‎) is an Iranian Android marketplace founded in February 2010 by Reza Mohammadi and Hessam Armandehi in collaboration with students from Sharif University of Technology. Cafe Bazaar provides its services specifically to Persian-speaking users and offers more 25,000 downloadable Iranian and international apps for gaming, social media, messaging and other uses. It gets roughly 20 million visits a week within Iran and its value is estimated at $20 million.

Cafe Bazaar is part of a technology scene that has developed amid —and perhaps due to— international sanctions and strict censorship laws that have scared off global tech companies. Considering the fact that Google Play is banned for the Iranian users, Cafe Bazaar launched their marketplace offering not only the viral apps you see in Google Play, but local Iranian apps making a room for Iranian startups and app developers to launch their product in their homeland.