E-Commerce Giant Teams Up With Online Supermarket

EghtesadOnline: Iran’s major e-retailer, Digikala, has begun collaborations with Rocoland, a local website offering food products in the capital.

News ID: ۷۴۵۶۷۲

21 July 2018

With 12 years of experience in online shopping, Digikala finally achieved the goal of entering the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) market by forming ties with Rocoland, wrote the giant e-retailer’s website.

According to Digikala CEO Saeed Mohammadi, customers need a platform offering the whole variety of products they depend on including edibles. In addition, the Digikala team intends to increase user engagement scales.

Furthermore, he said the firm hopes to support local brands offering food products through its collaborations with Rocoland, according to Financial Tribune.

Reminding that this deal “is not a merger,” Mohammadi added, “The agreement entails a share swap model in which the company [Rocoland] is not bought out [by Digikala], but it translates into a partnership [in this case] upon the FMCG business.”

Transforming the logistics and packaging industry, offering marketing services to domestic brands, helping the food industry’s research and development teams by conducting surveys on customers’ preferences and needs, facilitating the direct supply of organic products as well as other agricultural and protein goods, and last but not least, fulfilling the farmers’ dream of offering products to consumers directly were listed as the long-term objectives set for the tie-up, with no dealers involved, wrote Digikala’s website.

The collaborative project is set to offer 10,000 food products with a maximum delivery time of three hours.

During a ceremony held on the occasion of the tie-up, Hamid and Saeed Mohammadi, the brothers who have established Digikala, jointly announced a plan to list the firm on Iran’s exchange market. However, according to them, a precise time has not been determined for the move yet. If Digikala goes public, it will be the first startup offering an IPO in the country.