March 15, 2019
A lot of attention is focused these days on Dara Khosrowshahi, who has taken on the job of leading Uber, the ride service.
But it was Dara’s uncle, Hassan Khosrowshahi, who started the family’s business odyssey in North America after the revolution.
Hassan is now 78, but still active in Vancouver, British Columbia, though now more as a philanthropist than a businessman. He is estimated to be worth more than $1.2 billion, wealth he accumulated as the founder and proprietor of Future Shop, a chain of stores that dominated in Canada as the personal computer business started and then flourished.
Hassan’s father, Ali, started the family business empire in Tehran as the founder of the Minoo Industrial Group, a sprawling conglomerate with arms reaching into pharmaceuticals, food distribution, cosmetics and other goods, some involving his own brand and some under license from international firms.
But the revolution put Minoo and Hassan Khosrowshahi in the crosshairs, and, when Minoo was nationalized, Hassan decided to move to Canada, where he founded Future Shop in 1982. In the 1990s, it was the largest computer and consumer electronics retailer in Canada. He sold it to Best Buy in 2001.
Since then, Hassan has focused on real estate development in British Columbia, pharmaceuticals and philanthropy through his family firm, Persis Holdings Ltd.
He and his wife have two children—son Behzad runs DRI Capital, a pharmaceutical royalty firm, while daughter Golnar founded Reservoir Media, a music license business.
His nephew is Dara Khosrowshahi, who has gained global renown since he took over as CEO of troubled Uber and has tried to lead it back into the mainstream, both as a business enterprise and as a working culture.
Another relative is Darian Shirazi, the first intern hired by Facebook and now the head of 10-year-old San Francisco-based Radius, an aggregator of business information about small enterprises to help firms market to them. Yet another relative is Amir, who co-founded Nervana Systems, which was acquired by Intel in 2016 for $408 million.
Hassan Khosrowshahi is ranked among the 100 wealthiest Canadians. In 2016, he was named a member of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.