Dubai – The trend of online shopping has been increasing with every passing day, as the number of online shoppers availing a number of services has increased many folds especially in the last 5-years.
QNET has witnessed 28 per cent increased in term of online shoppers in 2013, which will be raised more in the current year. In Mena alone the online shoppers spent $8 billion annually, which is expected to be exceeded to $15 billion by 2015.
This was stated by Khaled Diab, Regional General Manager Mena, QNET in an exclusive interview with The Gulf Today on Friday.
The global e-commerce platform is new retail trend and through direct selling the volume of retail business reached $130 billion in 2013. Currently, the online business has been increased many folds, as 87 million distributors worldwide working for 300 top global companies.
Maysian based QNET has been providing a wide range of products online through direct selling and recorded $430 million revenue globally last year. The 15-year old firm has set up its Mena office in Abu Dhabi in 2009, and in the last 5-years expanded its operation to set up two more offices, Dubai and Mussafah to cover the region with the supply of 6000 shipments monthly.
“The QNET has been selling products like wellness, water purifier, luxury goods, skin and personal care products, online education courses and vacations to its loyal customers as the Mena region has around 2 million customers benefitting from the QNET platform,” he said.
In the last 5-years, the QNET has expanded its local operation to appoint 12 direct selling agents in 12 countries out of 21 countries in the Mena.
The online shopping in Mena for the QNET is recorded a high number of sales as 40 per cent of total sale of company alone completed in the region during 2013. The firm has been operating in 100 countries worldwide and every region has its unique range of products seeing record sale.
The UAE alone recorded $2 billion shopping through online in 2010 including the government services of e-commerce.
“The Mena region has around 350 million population with 110 million are online shoppers as 7 per cent are regular customers, which is obviously a great ratio,” said Diab.
In the region, Bahrain has 80 per cent of its population using the internet while 75 per cent population in UAE enjoying the internet facility. “Around 22.9 per cent internet users are alone in the Mena region which reflecting the wide opening of the e-commerce platform in the future,” he added.
Khaled Diab on the expansion of the QNET said that they are planning to wide their network to cover more countries in the region. Currently out of 52 countries in Mena, the QNET has its customers in 21 countries through its 12 direct selling agents and its regional office in UAE.
“This year our focus is to increase the number of shipments from the UAE to the region from 6000 per month to 15,000 to 18,000 in the next couple of months the UAE will be developed as second major hub for QNET products,” he said and pointed that the volume will be shifted from Malaysia to UAE.