Zbooni
Editor’s note with its own unique development path: This article is from WeChat public account “ePanda Going to the Middle East” (ID: ePandaMENA), issued under license.
China’s multi-brand and cloud-listed companies have been listed, and Meesho in India has raised more than $200 million since the end of 2018. On social media, between attention, sharing, and interaction, a pen transaction can be completed in the dialog box. This new retail model seems to be contagious, and the scale growth rate is much faster than traditional e-commerce retail.
In the Middle East, there are also many social e-commerce companies. For example, Boutiqaat raised $45 million in 2018 and its valuation is close to 500 million.
In addition to Boutiqaat, there is another social e-commerce company, Zbooni, which has recently been active and has its own unique development path.
The origin of Zbooni
Zbooni was founded in 2017. The founders RamyAssaf and AshrafAtia were both born and raised in the United States, but their main career is in the Middle East.
Last year, Zbooni has been incubating for five months on Facebook in California, and is the only company in the Middle East to be invited to participate in the FBStart 2.0 accelerator program; in June of this year, Zbooni received $1.1 million in financing, with the investor headquartered The UAE luxury retailer ChalhoubGorup and the Lebanese venture capital firm B&YVenturePartners.
Like other Internet companies, there is a story behind Zbooni’s founding:
In 2016, RamyAssaf’s wife began selling hats on social media. The simple model is to post information on Instagram and then leave their WhatsApp number to let customers contact themselves. The hat business is getting bigger and bigger, from tops and tops on a Friday to a hundred times a week. At this time, payment and logistics become a big problem.
RamyAssaf was starting a business at the time.An information solution company was established. After discovering the pain point of his wife’s business, he decided to transform the company’s business and become a social e-commerce solution.
Payment is the core
The most important thing in the social e-commerce solution designed by RamyAssaf is the payment link, so many people think that Zbooni is a payment company.
Social media sellers can download Zbooni in the app store for a range of settings, primarily addresses and payment methods. In the address column, the seller chooses his own address. When the transaction is reached, the logistics company of the Zbooni platform picks up the goods;
In the Payments section, the seller can choose to pay online and cash on delivery (COD), and the online payment is in cooperation with the payment gateway PayFort. Zbooni charges a 3.5% service fee for each transaction completed.
After setting up, sellers can easily share product links on FacebookMessenger, WhatsApp or Instagram.
On the client side, you see a link in the form of a conversation, no need to download any apps. Customers can view items and prices, bargain and pay directly.
When paying, the payment page will open in the client’s browser, and the merchant and customer will automatically receive the transaction voucher after the payment is completed.
This solution doesn’t sound complicated. There are Stripe, Shopify and Square in the US, Alipay and WeChat in China, but online payments are still at a very early stage throughout the Middle East. Tappayment and PayPort in the Middle East have a certain barrier to entry for small businesses or individual businesses.
Under experience, Zbooni is still very friendly, the software is light and simple, and customers can easily use the payment gateway.
According to data published by Zbooni, “The conversion rate of traditional e-commerce websites is usually about 2%, but for Zbooni, because merchants and customers always connect with apps through their favorite messages, once the shopping app is shared with customers The conversion rate will be as high as 84%”.
编 | 云晞@出海
Picture|Pexels
