GoNabit
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| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
N/A | Acquisition | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
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GoNabit was a pioneering daily deals and social commerce platform in the Middle East, founded in Dubai in February 2010 by Dan Stuart and Sohrab Jahanbani. The company operated an e-commerce platform that connected local businesses with consumers, offering time-sensitive, discounted deals on a variety of goods and services such as restaurant meals, spa treatments, and hotel stays. GoNabit's business model was centered on group buying; a deal would only become active once a minimum number of participants committed to the purchase with their credit cards. The company took a percentage of the revenue generated from these transactions.
Sohrab Jahanbani, a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in telecommunications and e-commerce, co-founded the region's first daily deals website. Dan Stuart, who had been developing the business concept, brought Jahanbani on as a co-founder to help manage the demanding workload. The duo was committed to establishing a pure e-commerce model, notably requiring credit card payments in a region where cash-on-delivery was the norm. This strategy was intended to build consumer confidence in online transactions and proved successful.
The company expanded rapidly from its headquarters in the UAE, launching operations in Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt within its first year. It distinguished itself by being one of the first group-buying sites in its markets and the first to offer an Arabic-language interface. This aggressive scaling and local-first approach were key to its strategy. In June 2011, just over a year after its launch, GoNabit was acquired by the major US-based daily deal site LivingSocial for an undisclosed amount, marking the first significant e-commerce acquisition in the Middle East. Following the acquisition, the founders remained with the company, which was rebranded as 'GoNabit, a LivingSocial company'. However, as the global daily deals market contracted, LivingSocial decided to shut down its Middle East operations a year later.
Keywords: GoNabit, Dan Stuart, Sohrab Jahanbani, daily deals, group buying, social commerce, Middle East e-commerce, LivingSocial acquisition, Dubai startup, online marketplace, discount vouchers, UAE technology, e-commerce exit, Bayt.com investment, MENA e-commerce, online coupons, local deals, collective buying, early e-commerce, regional expansion