The long-awaited launch of Noon.com moved closer on Tuesday as Mohamed Alabbar, Noon’s founder and Emaar’s chairman, broke his silence on the US$1 billion e-commerce platform that was supposed to be ready by January this year.
“I am pleased to confirm that Noon is on track to launch this year,” said Mr Alabbar in a statement.
Noon.com, which was announced in November last year with a January launch, is the brainchild of Mr Alabbar and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia looking to dominate the region’s rapidly changing retail landscape.
“It is vital that all our systems and processes work at the highest possible level,” said Mr Alabbar. “The coming months will be spent to ensure this, particularly with some of the many supply chain innovations we have been developing. Noon has the potential to disrupt the nascent e-commerce market in the region.”
Mr Alabbar had said the website would launch with up to 20 million products. Amazon carries about 40 million products.
Noon announced in November last year it had a warehouse the size of 60 football pitches in Dubai and a head office in Riyadh. Noon.com lost its chief executive, Fodhil Benturquia, last month and no replacement has been announced as yet.
“I hope we can launch in a few months, probably after summer,” said a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named. “I doubt we will be the market leader that was suggested at the announcement. The problems run very, very deep but I’m sure we can work them out.”
The troubled start-up looked to stem the bleeding last week when it was announced that Jadopado.com, a Dubai-based online marketplace, had been bought by Mr Alabbar’s technology fund. Its staff have been subsumed into Noon.com and its founder, Omar Kassim, made its chief technology officer, according to the sources.
There has been a flurry of activity this year in the online world with Amazon’s buyout of regional e-commerce platform Souq.com. Emaar had looked to outbid that deal by offering $800 million the day before Souq.com announced it would be bought by Amazon.
Mr Alabbar has other online stakes, owning 40 per cent of a €130m joint venture with Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP) to bring the Milan-based online luxury fashion retailer to the region next year as well as a 4 per cent stake in YNAP itself.
ascott@thenational.ae
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What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.