Middle East Digital Group acquires Cobone.com to fill its ecommerce gap

ExpatWoman.com team

More than two years after being acquired by Tiger
Global Management, Dubai-based daily deals
platform Cobone.com was acquired again
over the weekend by online publishing, content, and services
company Middle East
Digital Group (MEDG). It’s a private transaction and the cost
of the acquisition is not being released. Tiger had acquired
Cobone from Jabbar Internet Group in March 2013 for a
reported $40 million.

This is the first acquisition by MEDG, which was just launched
this year by Jane Drury. MEDG will be the umbrella company for a
number of websites, the first of which is ExpatWoman.com, which Drury
also launched back in 2002. MEDG will be focusing on online
marketing in the Arab region and worldwide, offering advertisers a
reach of over a million unique visitors and seven million page
views a month.

Drury and her team have built ExpatWoman.com over the past 12
years, expanding the site’s reach from its original market in the
UAE, to the Gulf, wider Middle East, Central Europe, Asia, and
then, in November 2014, globally. ExpatWoman.com currently covers
240 countries, and attracts over 500,000 unique visitors a
month.

Why Cobone?

“ExpatWoman is continuously looking to add services to its
readers. What we want to focus on now is developing ecommerce
services,” says MEDG CEO Jane Drury.

As the region’s first daily deals site, founded in
2010, Cobone adds scale as well as expertise to MEDG’s
portfolio, particularly in the areas of ecommerce capabilities,
operations, and experience in the Saudi market.

“Cobone it is a strong brand and it has a well established
reputation among a number of other daily deals sites in the region,
which [aligns well] with ExpatWoman,” Drury adds.

Drury looks at the acquisition as a “good package” altogether
when it comes to the business, the brand, and the team.

Overall, 30 employees from Cobone will be joining the ExpatWoman
team. Further, Richard Pakenham will come over from
Dubizzle to head sales for both teams. Cobone offices and
staff will move to the Tower at Dubai Studio City, adjacent to the
current ExpatWoman.com offices. “It will feel seamless for both
teams and clients, with a potential to develop new verticals for
new niche markets. There will be no job losses; both companies are,
in fact, hiring,” says Drury.

Cobone’s story

Founded by Irish entrepreneur Paul Kenny in 2010, Cobone grew to
become the region’s largest daily deals site, and nurtured a direct
presence in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, serving an active user base
of some 500,000 unique visitors. “We each have half a million
unique visitors, [and] putting both together makes it very
interesting for adverts agencies and brands,” says Drury.

The most gratifying thing in this deal for Kenny is the
continuity of the brand, allowing him some bandwidth to focus on
travel site Safarna, which
remains a part of Tiger’s portfolio companies. “Over the past four
years we have built a great company, one that continued to grow and
was at the forefront of ecommerce in the region. The team have been
phenomenal that have built it and without a doubt the only reason
Cobone was a success was down to the team driving it every single
day,” Kenny says.

Both Kenny and Drury agree that the deal took longer than
expected, especially on the legal side. “With all good intentions
you hope you can finalize the legalities in a matter of days but it
always takes months. This part of any deal is often the hardest and
most tiring,” says Kenny.

It seems like both sides are looking forward to the next year,
and have big plans for growth ahead. “Good things take time; you
cannot rush a process or force and issue. A deal has two parties
and it takes time to get everything in order so when you sign on
the dotted line things run seamlessly. Cobone has found a great new
home at MEDG and I cannot wait to see how it grows in the years to
come,” Kenny ends.