Souq (company)

The website was founded in 2005 by Ronaldo Mouchawar and was originally a consumer-to-consumer auction site part of Maktoob Group. In 2010, Wisam (Sam) Daoud joined Souq from eBay as Chief Technology Officer and led the transformation of the business from auctions to a fixed price catalog based business similar to Amazon.com. In March 2014, Naspers invested another $75 million in the company, The company was backed by Tiger Global Management and Naspers Ltd. as of 2015, among other companies, and headquartered in Dubai. On March 27, 2017, Emaar Properties made an offer for Souq of $800 million. while the Financial Times reported that the deal was "understood to be worth more than $650m". The BBC also reported that Amazon might be paying about $650 million. ==Overview==

As of March 2017, it sold over 8.4 million products in 31 categories, including "consumer electronics, fashion, health and beauty, household goods and baby." often described as the Amazon of the Middle East. As of 2014, the site delivered to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar. As of September 1, 2021, Souq's online presence was completely replaced by Amazon when the last Souq.com site was replaced by Amazon.eg, the UAE and Saudi Arabian sites had previously been shutdown. ==Souq.com subsidiaries==

As of January 2018, Souq.com subsidiaries include their delivery arm – QExpress, payment platform – Payfort which became Amazon Pay in Dec 2020, repair and service marketplace – Helpbit, and delivery marketplace Wing. ==See also==