Retail portal hoping to look a bit portly

The Life: JadoPado is a local retail site that means 'fatty;. Yet can it hope to earn fat profits in a region with a strong mall culture?

Omar Kassim, the founder of JadoPado.

Omar Kassim, the founder of JadoPado, a retail portal based in Dubai, named his website after the Gujarati word for "fatty". He hopes the site, which sells goods such as Apple's iPad, will bring fat profits. Yet with the low uptake of e-commerce in the UAE, online retail sites face an uphill battle against the prevalent mall culture. Mr Kassim explains how he plans to compete.

What does the name JadoPado mean?

I'm Sri Lankan by nationality, from a minority community. And we speak a dialect of Gujarati. JadoPado is the equivalent of "fatty" in English.

That explains half of it. But why fatty?

When we were brainstorming names, my sister saw my little son running about. And she said "oh, why don't you use the name JadoPado"?, because his little belly was sticking out. And it sounded catchy. We wanted something that stood out, and possibly meant something a bit funny.

Does that mean you are specifically targeting the Gujarati population?

Not at all. Our target is just about anyone. Currently we deliver to Dubai only: we wanted a nice-sized test market. But we're expanding into Abu Dhabi and Sharjah in the next six weeks.

When did you launch the site and what have sales been like?

The site went live on March 20. And we've touched Dh2 million (US$544,000) in terms of sales. It's actually been beyond expectations because we've done no PR or [mainstream] marketing, except a few Google ads. Our main marketing has come from people talking about it.

What is the competition like in the UAE's online retail industry?

It's a very nascent market at the moment. There isn't a lot of competition. But at the same time it depends on the category. If you look at the electronics space, it's very competitive. But in some of the other retail categories there just aren't enough players out there. Some of the larger retailers with physical presences have made half-ditched efforts, but haven't really pushed it.

Is it only a matter of time before Amazon launches a store in the region? What impact would that have on local players?

I think Amazon potentially doesn't see this space as a large enough market. I don't know if it makes enough sense for Amazon to start up.

Your site sells electronics and perfume. What other categories are you looking at introducing?

We're looking at expanding the fashion category. We're very seriously looking at the grocery space. It would be non-fresh [goods] to start off with. We're probably looking at another 12 months before we approach wholesalers. It makes sense - we can see a market for it, but perhaps we need to give it a little more time. It's on the back-burner at the moment.

There's a strong mall culture here in the UAE. How can retail websites hope to compete with that?

Mall culture out here goes beyond shopping: It's your time out, it's a place to eat. But at the same time Dubai and, by extension, the region is very convenience-driven. It's probably one of the only cities where you can drive up to an ATM machine. And in that sense, our biggest selling point is our delivery times: we generally deliver the same day.