BCBusiness

July/August 2022 - The Top 100

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.

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E V A L I AGE: 29 Co-founder + chief product officer, ImmiSearch Technologies LIFE STORY: Eva Li was raised in Hong Kong until the age of 16, when she left for Chilliwack and eventually UBC and SFU, where she built community through a science degree. She ended up spend- ing just under four years at Vancouver-based Copperleaf Technologies. But all of that almost never happened. When she originally applied for her extended permits, she made a mistake and it affected her status for both high school and university. Fortunately, she was able to make it work. But she didn't forget the experience. So she quit a comfortable position at Copperleaf last year to start Immisearch, an online immigration consul- tant platform. "Immigration, paperwork, visas, it's always stressful," says Li. "Lots of friends and family have gone through a stressful process with their perma- nent residency application." BOTTOM LINE : Unlike traditional immigration firms, Immisearch—which has over 2,000 subscribers—is automated, with eligibility assessments done online. "The rejection rate on traditional applications is 26 percent," says Li. "Out of that 26, seven out of 10 can- didates get accepted on the second time. So it's qualified candidates who just made an error on the application. That can have a huge impact on your personal timeline." –N.C. Nader Samadyan and Arya Rashtchian A R Y A R A S H T C H I A N & N A D E R S A M A D Y A N AGES: 27 Co-founder + CEO; co-founder + COO, Omnicart LIFE STORY: Growing up in Tehran, Arya Rashtchian played for the Iranian capital's professional bas- ketball team. In high school, hoping to leave his conservative homeland, he told his father he wanted to move to Canada. "He was like, Yeah, all good," Rashtchian recalls, "but I'm not going to pay for it." So after completing a software engineering degree from Sharif University of Technology, Rashtchian won a schol- arship to do a master of computer science at UBC. Moving to Vancouver in 2018, he reconnected with his childhood friend Nader Samadyan, who earned a BSc in computer sci- ence from the same school and went on to work as a software developer for SAP Canada and as an infrastruc- ture engineer with Sony Pictures Imageworks. Halfway through his master's, Rashtchian realized that he wanted to be an entrepreneur after getting accepted to the Creative Destruction Lab program at UBC Sauder School of Business. So he and Samadyan launched DineEasy, a mini manage- ment platform for restaurants. Although the pair brought about 30 JULY/AUGUST 2022 BCBUSINESS 41 TOP: OMNICART local clients on board, they decided the venture wasn't for them. A series of pivots led to Omnicart, a white- label service for entrepreneurs who lack the technology to create their own delivery business. Unlike its U.S.-based rivals, which focus on food and bever- age, Omnicart allows customers to sell just about anything. "With our product, they can establish a delivery business for food and beverage, liquor, consumer goods, cannabis," explains Rashtchian, whose company uses a subscription model and takes a commission for each order. "Also, we offer them a drastically more cus- tomizable and modern technology." BOTTOM LINE : Omnicart, which launched its product in May 2021, recently began a formal alliance with the Restaurant Marketing and Delivery Association ( RMDA), whose 550-plus members span 700 U.S. cit- ies. The 10-employee company plans to have 200 partners by the end of 2024. "The U.S. market will be the main focus in the next 12 months," Rashtchian says. "After that, we'll definitely consider expansion to Asia, South America and other areas." –N.R. Eva Li

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