SiPot helps businesses and tourist destinations attract visitors by creating engaging location-based games.

 The global tourism industry has been one of the hardest-hit industries during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Despite positive progress on vaccinations across the world, the global travel industry is expected to take several years to recover. Because international travel options are being limited, domestic travel will be crucial in accelerating the industry’s recovery process. SiPot, a company that recently moved to Canada through TBDC’s Start-Up Visa program, aims to provide Canadian businesses and tourist destinations with an exciting solution to attract more local tourists.

SiPot is a platform that helps local destinations and indigenous businesses attract visitors using location-based games and encourages discovery, exploration, and on-site learning. The platform offers various types of cache-based games including Wherigo Caches, a GPS-enabled adventure game that guides players to physical locations where they can interact with various objects. Using the SiPot platform, businesses and tourist destinations can create exciting and engaging games like treasure hunts around their locations. Furthermore, the platform will allow local destinations to monetize through in-app advertising from nearby cafes, shops, and hotels. Aside from tourist destinations, the platform will also allow schools and businesses to create exciting games and experiences for students and employees.

SiPot was launched 2 years ago by an all-women team led by Azadeh Ahangarian, CEO of the company. Azadeh is the co-founder of Wonex, the parent company for SiPot which helps empower the next wave of women entrepreneurs in Iran. The other co-founders of SiPot are Elham Abadian, COO, and Fatemeh Zangeneh, CMO. The three co-founders have also previously launched Negareh Gardan, a consulting company based out of Iran with revenues of over $100,000. With almost 30 years of total combined industry experience among them, they each bring unique skillsets that allow them to effectively grow their business.

The co-founders decided to move their new start-up to Canada after realizing the North American market offers a significantly greater opportunity. “Considering our platform’s key value proposition and benefits, we feel that Canada and the US offered a much better product-market fit”, said Azadeh. “The tourism infrastructure in Canada is quite developed and the country also provides great incentives for start-ups,” added Fatemeh. While evaluating various designated organizations to partner with in their move to Canada, the co-founders were referred to TBDC by a trusted friend who had also successfully made the move to the country. “Right from the start, TBDC has been extremely helpful in ensuring our entire immigration process went as smooth as possible and we especially appreciate their thorough process and attention to detail.” Both Azadeh and Fatemah have expressed their excitement in working with TBDC at such a crucial stage for the company. “Since we are new to the country, we are grateful for the hand-holding and support that TBDC is providing us.”