The Dubai-based start-up, which attracts around 2.5 million visitors and 34 million page views a month, is in the final stages of building an Arabic-language site to pave the way for its regional expansion.
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“[Dubizzle will be] everywhere from Casablanca to Muscat,” said Dubizzle co-founder JC Butler. “In every capital Arab city and, in some countries such as Saudi, in Riyadh and Jeddah, and in Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt. Our goal is to be in 15 new cities by the end of the year.
“The only countries we won’t be in are Iraq, Yemen and Sudan – but our goal eventually is to be everywhere. It’s a natural progression [because] the population is huge and switched on.”
Founded in Dubai in 2005, Dubizzle is one of the UAE’s most successful internet start-ups. In the last three years, Q1 visits to the site have grown by 200 percent, 202 percent and 169 percent respectively, said Butler.
Less than a year after the launch of the Abu Dhabi site, 19 percent of the traffic generated by the UAE’s two key cities comes from the capital.
“It has been phenomenal growth in Abu Dhabi, much quicker than we ever saw in Dubai.”
Dubizzle’s first targets will be Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the region’s most populous countries.
The aim is to transform Dubizzle into the Arab world’s largest online classifieds service, said co-founder Sim Whatley.
According to Google data, the number of internet users in the Arab World has rocketed from 16.5m in 2004 to 56m, as of April 2010; a 228 percent increase.
“Classifieds is a done deal once you have major market share – the kind we have in Dubai. Once that happens, it’s very difficult to topple it because it’s a natural monopoly. It’s that chicken and egg problem – people go where the listings are, but the listings go where the people are.
“There are a number of existing players, but none with that kind of dominance.”
June 2, 2010
source: arabianbusiness.com