Start-up Boom in an Emerging Market: A Niche Market Approach

Abstract

Startups, as an integral part of any entrepreneurship ecosystem, play a critical role in the success of emerging markets. Without these entities, less niche market opportunities are prone to be explored and exploited. In recent years, startup boom is happening in most of the emerging economies, and the startup ecosystem is shaped to some extent in different countries at this level of development. Then, in this chapter the author tries to elaborate the startup ecosystem in general, and investigates the startup ecosystem in an emerging economy, i.e. Iran. Then, a classification of the existing niche market opportunities which are explored and exploited by Iranian startups is presented. Finally, the chapter concludes with some remarks and directions for future research.

Keywords: Startup, Emerging market, Niche market, Startup ecosystem, Iran