A Dubai businessman, Mohammed Alabbar, has announced that he is going to create an ecommerce company called Noon. Noon is set to launch in January 2017 and will initially target the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with the ambition of expanding to other Middle Eastern countries in later years. Mr. Alabbar has said that he wants the site to boost ecommerce from accounting for 2% of sales in the region to 15%, equivalent to 70 billion US dollars. The site will offer 20 million different products and will have its own online payment service, Noonpay. Mr. Alabbar has also said the site will offer fast deliveries, with its own in-house transportation company. Mr. Alabbar is currently raising 1 billion US dollars in funds to create the company, which he hopes will become the dominant ecommerce site in the Middle East.
