Egypt’s Yaoota Acquires Two Phone Comparison Portals On The Road To E-commerce Glory- Valutrics

Egypt-based e-commerce platform Yaoota acquired phone comparison portals Mobihall and Mobilesgate.

The value of the deal remained is not disclosed.

Founded in 2014, Yaoota is operating in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kenya and Nigeria.

With the deal, Yaoota’s traffic is expected to reach around five million monthly visits or around 15 million monthly page views, making it a leading online product discovery service in the Middle East and Africa, said Sherif ElRakabawy, co-founder and CEO of Yaoota.

According to ElRakabawy, its traffic and revenue have been growing between four and 14 times year-on-year since inception.

Mobihall and Mobilesgate list prices of devices while Yaoota has the algorithm that fetches relevant prices automatically, said ElRakabawy.

The deal closes the loop on the user experience as the combined entity will provide price and purchase options after the user explores specifications of smartphones he or she is interested in, he said.

Yaoota has been monitoring the phone comparison portals for a year and decided to acquire them after a thorough analysis, said ElRakabawy.

Both companies’ management team will be supporting Yaoota as advisors while the latter will be managing the portals, he said.

According to ElRakabawy, the e-commerce market in the region is growing at a significant rate. Several stores get online every month, and more users are searching and buying online, he said adding that Souq’s acquisition by Amazon has sent positive shockwaves across the region.

Yaoota aims to grow its product discovery platform to help shoppers make the right decision before buying and enable online stores to reach more customers, he added.

In 2015, Yaoota raised $2.7 million Series A round led by UAE private equity investor KBBO Group.