Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE): MoveSouq.com, the largest online home services marketplace in the UAE, today announced the successful close of a $3 million funding round at an undisclosed valuation. The funding round was led by AddVenture, an international venture capital (VC) company focused on service marketplaces.
Founded in 2013, MoveSouq.com is an online marketplace that connects users in UAE and Qatar to reputable moving, home services and insurance companies. Since inception, the company has grown multiple-fold each year in traffic and transactions. In the last year alone, MoveSouq has helped over 50,000 households in Dubai and Abu Dhabi find and book their services online with a professional home services company. This funding round represents its third, after their seed and angel rounds in 2013 and 2015.
MoveSouq was founded by Bana Shomali and Wim Torfs, both former consultants at McKinsey and Company. With this new funding, MoveSouq.com will strengthen its products and services, and expand its services to new cities in the Middle East. In addition, the investment will be used to build new verticals on the platform.
"This investment will bring us closer to our ambition to become the leading choice for all families in the region who are looking for any kind of home service. The home services market in the region represents a significant untapped opportunity, estimated at USD 5bn per year in the GCC alone, and consumers are starting to buy these services online. We will utilize the new funding to aggressively go after this opportunity and maintain our first-mover advantage." said MoveSouq.com CEO Bana Shomali.
AddVenture is a sector-specific, international venture capital firm that invests into similar businesses around the world. Expressing his confidence in MoveSouq.com, Pavel Terentiev, Partner at AddVenture, said, "We are fascinated by the strong uptake in online platforms for local services in different parts of the world, from Australia to Latin America. The market for home and local services is a huge opportunity in absolute terms, and the penetration of online transactions in this market still lags to that within other segments like entertainment, travel, transportation or food consumption. We therefore believe MoveSouq.com provides fundamental value to its users, and has a proven business case. We are also very impressed with the rapid growth the team at MoveSouq.com has delivered so far, and that they have become the leader in the region's online home services market in such a short time."
Commenting on the investment by Addventure, Bana Shomali said: "The fact that international investors like Addventure are showing interest in the region is a great signal for Middle East-based startups. We're very excited to be partnered with Addventure, as they bring unique expertise from working with similar platforms around the world, and a global network that will be extremely valuable to us as we continue to grow."
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About MoveSouq.com:
MoveSouq.com is a Dubai-based online marketplace that provides quotes and online bookings for moving, home services, and insurance services through an extensive network of more than 300 partners. On MoveSouq.com, customers can read detailed service offerings and user reviews of each provider before selecting which companies to use. Founded in 2013, MoveSouq.com has since grown to four cities in the Middle East, with plans to expand in the MENA region and beyond.
About AddVenture:
Addventure is a sector-specific, international venture capital firm based in Moscow. It invests in ventures all over the world and across the different investment stages. Overseeing several investment funds of over USD 100m, Addventure has made investments in US, Europe, Russia, Turkey in both vertical-specific online platforms and broader horizontal marketplaces.
© Press Release 2016
