The worldwide re-commerce market is poised for progress as shoppers increasingly accept pre-owned items to save lots of on price, and as some observe acutely aware consumption. With the worldwide re-commerce market anticipated to proceed its growth spurt, C2C marketplaces like Saudi Arabia’s Soum need to seize customers within the Center East and North Africa (MENA) area.
Soum was based within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2021, and is now eyeing progress enlargement to different MENA nations, starting with the United Arabs Emirates. The plans are pushed by its latest $18 million Sequence A funding.
The spherical was led by Saudi’s Jahez Group with participation from New-York based mostly Isometry Capital alongside current traders Khwarizmi Ventures, Alrajhi Companions, and Outliers Enterprise Capital. It follows $4 million seed funding in 2021.
Past enlargement, the startup, whose high listings are electronics, can be rising the classes it covers by together with merchandise like vehicles and collectibles.
“’We are expanding into different geographies and are looking at the whole MENA region. We have also started testing new categories to fulfill our vision of being a place where you can sell everything from phones to automobiles,” mentioned Fahad Al Hassan, who co-founded Soum with Bader Almubarak, and Fahad Albassam.
“We want to make buying and selling easier and accessible to everyone,” mentioned Al Hassan, who beforehand labored as a advisor at PwC and technique supervisor at Saudi’s inside transformation ministry.
Abdulaziz Alhouti, the chief funding officer of Jahez Group, the father or mother firm of Jahez, the Saudi meals supply platform that went public in 2021, commenting on the spherical advised TechCrunch: “The second-hand market has been exclusively dominated by classifieds and they did a good job, but as we progress in the digital age, we need to see something that is more convenient, frictionless, sustainable and that ensures trust. This is the preposition that Soum brings to the table.”
Soum manages the complete course of from itemizing to supply. Its supply arm is supported by third celebration logistics companions. To checklist merchandise, sellers are required to ship photographs of their gadgets for pre-approval. The startup additionally processes and holds funds till consumers affirm receipt, as a precautionary measure for fraud.
Al Hassan mentioned most items take three to 4 days to ship, and customers have 24 hours to provoke returns, the place merchandise are unsatisfactory. It has plans to increase the return interval to every week or perhaps a month for some merchandise.
The startup makes cash by way of commissions for each merchandise offered. The cost is predicated on a spread of things together with provide and demand.
“The commission ranges between 10 and 20% of the product value. The higher the product value the less percentage and the more frequent the seller is the less it becomes; so, multiple factors are considered,” mentioned Al Hassan including that Soum will get greater than 30,000 listings each month. Iphones and laptops are the highest promoting merchandise.
Al Hassan anticipates higher progress for the corporate because the uptake of homegrown options continues, and following Saudi Arabia’s push for native options to wade off reliance on worldwide marketplaces. In addition to, the nation is claimed to be within the midst of a tech growth, with information exhibiting a spike within the variety of e-commerce businesses and uptake of e-services.
