Souq.com reportedly attracts over 45 million visits per month. Price tags valuing the company as high as USD 1 billion have been cited by media reports.
It is thought that the price paid by Amazon is notably lower than this threshold for entry into the so-called unicorn club of tech firms who boast valuations above USD 1 billion, with TechCrunch suggesting that the winning bid was more in the region of USD 650 million.
Since launching in the United Arab Emirates in 2005, Souq.com has sought to branch out into additional regional counties, with pushes into neighboring Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait, as well as Egypt, kicking off in recent years.
Until today, Amazon did not have a presence in the Middle Eastern region which has a population of around 50 million consumers but currently displays a very low level of online retail spend penetration. According to a report from McKinsey, only around 2% of retail transactions take place online today.
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