Noon.com To Raise $2 Bn, Expand Across the Middle East
Amazon.com’s Middle Eastern rival Noon.com is set to draw as much as $2 billion in financing from investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund over three to four years, as it seeks to capture a larger slice of the Gulf eCommerce market. The investments from the Public Investment Fund and others will be used to […]
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Amazon.com’s Middle Eastern rival Noon.com is set to draw as much as $2 billion in financing from investors including Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund over three to four years, as it seeks to capture a larger slice of the Gulf eCommerce market.
The investments from the Public Investment Fund and others will be used to upgrade infrastructure and help speed up deliveries, Noon founder Mohamed Alabbar said late on Sunday. “They are happy with our progress and they are happy to fund,” he said.
The Middle East has been slower to adapt to eCommerce than other regions, although lockdowns to combat the coronavirus pandemic last year have accelerated the shift to online shopping and food delivery.
Alabbar said eCommerce currently accounts for 2 to 2.5 per cent of total retail in the region, compared with 20 to 22 per cent in the western world and China.
Noon operates in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and is looking to expand in other nations across the Middle East.
“We have a long way to go,” Alabbar said. “There is a lot of room for growth and a lot of countries to cover.”
Alabbar, who owns 50 per cent of Noon jointly with other regional private investors, raised $1 billion from backers including the PIF, as Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is known, to create the firm in 2016. It now has about 4 million daily users and growth is accelerating as it pushes into grocery delivery.
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“Traffic is growing on a monthly basis,” Alabbar said. “We’re easily doubling every year and the volume of package delivery is up almost 2.5 times.”
Any new funding for Noon would come amid a wave of tech investments in the region. In June, a PIF unit led a new financing round for Jordan-based online classifieds business OpenSooq.com, which is looking to triple its headcount across the Middle East. Sanabil, another unit of the wealth fund, led a $35 million funding round for Dubai-based online car trader SellAnyCar.com last year.
That followed a series of landmark deals including Amazon’s acquisition of eCommerce platform Souq.com and the sale of ride-hailing app Careem to Uber Technologies. Alabbar is also chairman of Dubai’s biggest developer, Emaar Properties.
