With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1388249
FROM TOP: AMRIN PRASAD; ARASH AZRAHIMI, JOHANNA LIBBEY (STYLIST) JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 65 T A W A N D A M A S A W I + R A N A T A J AGES: 25 + 26 Co-founder + CEO Co-founder + president GameSeta Esports LIFE STORY: "I come from a pretty corporate background," says Tawanda Masawi, who grew up in Zimbabwe, where his father is CEO of one of southern Africa's largest sugar producers. The same goes for his busi- ness partner and fellow immigrant Rana Taj, whose dad owns a hospital in Pakistan. Masawi and Taj met at SFU, where they completed degrees in economics and mechatronics, robotics and automation engineering, respectively, last year. In high school, neither had cared much for traditional sports, but they spent a lot of time playing video games. When joining SFU's Civic Innova- tion Change Lab piqued his interest in entrepreneurship, Masawi was deter- mined to launch a company before he graduated. Then a local entrepreneur opened his eyes to esports. Doing some research, Masawi and Taj found that Canada had no infrastructure that let high-school students compete in online gaming. So in 2019, they launched GameSeta and its digital platform, which helps time-strapped teachers to manage an esports program and connect with leagues in other school districts. Although there was some push- back from schools at first, COVID-19 changed the game because students couldn't do regular sports anymore, Masawi says. Starting with School District No. 43 in Coquitlam, Game- Seta signed the first-ever esports agreement with BC School Sports, which opened the activity to all high schools throughout the province. Last year, it won the Top Idea prize at SFU's Coast Capital Savings Venture Prize competition. BOTTOM LINE : Masawi and Taj turned down several offers from potential investors before selling their startup in January to Play Ver- sus, the largest high-school esports provider in the U.S. The GameSeta founders, who now head Play Versus' Canadian operations, are focused on national expansion. "The growth potential is massive," Masawi says of esports. "Essentially, we're build- ing a digital playground." Esports stars can command salaries approaching those of NBA players, Masawi notes. "Now it's an actual career path." The business is also attracting major brands like Pepsi as sponsors, he adds: "You're going to start to see the traditionalization of gaming and esports as you start to see big [names] putting their money down." –N.R. P E T E R S H A H B E I G I AGE: 27 Co-founder + CEO Flash Health Technologies LIFE STORY: Peter Shahbeigi sold his first company–"a Nokia wholesaler, back when Nokia was king of the world"–when he was 12 years old growing up in Iran. The son of two doctors, he came to Vancouver in 2012 and sold two more businesses. So, yeah, Shahbeigi had a ton of experience when a food service company he and longtime friend Poya Ezadpana launched in 2019 had to shut down due to COVID-19. They kept all the funds they'd raised and all the investors on board, shifting to pharmacy deliveries using the same infrastructure, under the name Flash Health Technologies. "I never thought that I would be in the pharmacy business. It was just an accident that COVID made happen," Shahbeigi says. "We had to pivot because we had shareholders in the company and had to make sure we could create value for them and make sure the company kept running." BOTTOM LINE : They did that and then some. With 17 full-time employees and 220 drivers on the road, Flash Health has partnerships with 275 pharmacies across Canada and is angling toward its goal of same-day delivery of medication any- where in the country. The company also has its eye on an IPO in the near future. –N.C. Peter Shahbeigi Tawanda Masawi (left) and Rana Taj 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y