British online marketplace OnBuy plans to spread wings in 142 countries, including the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, to become a global player. Speaking with TechRadar Pro Middle East, Cas Paton, founder and CEO of OnBuy, said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are emerging markets and offer new growth opportunities for sellers and customers. He said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will come online in September or October, adding that the markets are huge and should continue to grow and that neither the Amazon nor the South are truly global. Amazon focuses only on 19 countries. “The UK is extremely saturated and when we launched the market in 2016, VCs said it wasn't a market and they wouldn't take over because there were already too many. 'actors. “But we've seen tremendous growth in the UK because we know our model is working and gaining ground. We plan to replicate this in the CCG and we may win new customers. Winning and retaining new customers is easy as opposed to moving a customer from an existing platform," he said. Furthermore, he said that many e-commerce players do not put autonomy in the hands of buyers and that consumers do not have any choice "OnBuy is ideally the global marketplace. We're not directly targeting Amazon as a competitor. When you dissect the UK ecommerce market, 71% of the market is not for Amazon and we don't need every Amazon customer to be a platform successful, and that's what we did in the UK."United," he said.he told me.
See 25,000 retailers by the end of 2021
The platform aims to reach 1% of the global e-commerce market at €3,46 billion, or €35 billion, in the next five years. "We are well ahead of our target and aim to reach over €2 billion in sales by 2024. We are on track to claim 3-5% of the €84 billion UK e-commerce market over the next three years. Our business is growing 11 times a year. Take a look at Amazon and the growth rate in the Middle East markets, there are great opportunities to enter the ecosystem and become a fair platform for consumers and sellers," said Paton . The startup has raised a total of €8 million, including a €5 million Series A funding round from London-based venture capitalist Fuel Ventures and other experienced investors, including Nathalie Gaveau, co-founder of Priceminister, market later acquired by Rakuten. "We will seek more funding next year and plan to open our 'B' series in the next 12 to 18 months," she said. Since its launch, she said OnBuy has brought together more than 8 million customers and more than 25 million products from 5,000 retailers, with more than 4,5 million monthly visits and more than 400 retailers joining each month. . "We have already signed up over 100 US retailers to join the board of directors and are in discussions with select GCC retailers. By the end of the year, we expect to have approximately 8,000 retailers on their platform. 2021 is where real growth will happen after of the expansion and aims to have around 25,000 retailers," he said.