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UAE's Crescent Group eyes African e-commerce market

Xinhua, June 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Crescent Enterprises, a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based diversified conglomerate, said Tuesday that it decided to invest in Dubai-based Mara Group, in order to tap into Africa's estimated 75 billion-dollar e-commerce market.

Crescent Investments, the strategic investment arm of Crescent Enterprises, said in an e-mailed statement that it had led a group of private investors to forge an investment deal to support two business verticals under Mara Group, Mara Shopping and Mara Xpress.

Crescent Enterprises' strategic investment in Mara Group is aimed to reach out into Africa as the continent's population is projected to grow to 1.6 billion by 2025 and e-commerce sales estimated to surge from the current one billion dollar to 75 billion dollar in 2025, said the statement.

Badr Jafar, Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Enterprises, saw Africa's great potential for growth over the next decade, particularly in the technology sector.

"Our entry into this market in partnership with Mara Group is in line with Crescent Enterprises' strategic expansion goals for 2016," he said.

As a multinational company active in various fields including logistics, healthcare and private equity, Crescent Enterprises has 20 subsidiaries and affiliated companies, with more than 5,000 employees across 22 countries on five continents.

UAE-headquarted Mara Group was set up in 1996 to serve as mobile and tech platforms, where Mara Xpress and Mara Shopping connect people across Africa and the Middle East via e-commerce, m-commerce and "last mile" logistics.

Mara Xpress has already formed a distribution hub in Dubai, and plans to roll out to countries across Africa in the next four years in tandem with Mara Shopping, said the statement.

"Mara's tech vertical offers a complete end-to-end customer experience through Mara Shopping and Mara Xpress. We will also follow a different approach from current players in the market as Africa's first two-way marketplace," said Ashish J Thakkar, the founder of Mara Group.

Through the new collaboration with the consortium of investors led by Crescent Enterprises, "we have the opportunity to launch the platform later this year and really test and fine-tune the business model, which we believe will be the key to scaling up and succeeding in the African market as a whole," he added. Endit