Rocket Internet AG (“Rocket”, ISIN DE000A12UKK6, RKET) today announces the signing of the acquisition of 100% of the shares in Talabat, one of the leading players in the attractive online food takeaway market in the Middle East, headquartered in Kuwait, for approximately EUR 150 million. The closing of the transaction is expected in the next few weeks.
Daaaaaaammmnnnn… [Source]
Thanks Ziad
50 replies on “Talabat Sold for KD50,000,000”
So does this mean that now entrepreneurs will stop opening up frozen yogurt shops and instead focus on opening up online portals for ordering food???
Amazing
ما شاء الله
Mark, there is much more info about the deal here:
https://rocketinternet.pr.co/95713-rocket-internet-further-strengthens-its-new-global-online-takeaway-group-with-strategic-investment-in-the-attractive-middle-east-onlin
On the official company website
Thanks just updated my post
Jokes apart though, really happy for the guys that started this.
Congratulations to them. It really is amazing.
ما شاء الله and alf mabrook
Apparently the most recent owners aren’t the people who started it. I heard it was sold from the founders, to the most recent owners, who now sold it off.
Something like that.
Yeah talabat I think was sold during the financial crisis for like 500,000kd. At least I think that’s what I remember.
You are right Nasser.
The recent owners bought it in 2010.
It still makes me feel happy and proud to see a local success story after quite a long time.
you are right, it was my friends college project [ al romi family ] , the recent owners are the ones who bought it from the founders for a cheap price, it wasn’t as big, they just started it, but the money they offered was high, so they sold it off
Plot twist: All money will be used to open 345 new burger joints all over Kuwait.
If this 150 fils is their only revenue source, with simple calculations, rocket-internet will need to receive a something like 185,000 order per day, for the coming 5 years to only get the money back as revenue, without considering their costs that has to be paid. So maybe break even if like 8 years ? Unless they have a big plan to really operate in the world outside USA and China as per their mission…. 185,000 order per day is something crazy…
Is this business worth today all that ?
Been thinking the same but I think they take good commissions or fee from Food Outlets too.
Still, it does not explain the price… q8car by itself was sold for 100,000 KD when it was the most accessed website in Kuwait… The talabat domain address is also worth something like 100,000 KD based on the traffic.. adding the business of 150 fils for each order does not make the Net Present Value (NPV) of the business to even reach 1 million KD (not mentioning the costs, even if they are minimal). Lets say they have other ways of getting income from the online food specialised ads for another 1 million, and it’s database (which supposedly they are not allowed to sell to other business lines, not sure about legal stuff)..So 2 million or 3 million KD.. But 50 million ?
I can’t find really any explanation… I might also be missing something major here …
Q8car was sold for a million not 100,000
Thank you for the correction.
I might be wrong btw. I just remember hearing that talabat was sold for 500,000 and Q8car for 1mil.
but definitely not 100,000. my blog is probably worth that much or more.
Your blog might be worth more than KD 100,000
As a quick calculation, a rough estimate of value is 5 to 10 times the annual net profit (depending on the business model)
Don’t value your blog so cheaply 😀
Let me know if you want any help valuing it
I can’t see 248 being worth that much if anything at all.
The problem is that it’s a one man show and if Mark is not there – then there is no value to the operation or the domain.
Mark goes – readers drop – advertisers pull out because no audience – site is then worth nothing.
True if you look at it with the current site structure but think outside of the box for a second and you’ll see there is a lot of potential here. Everyone is dispensable including me…
According to the podcast and interview with Mr.Jaffar the owner of talabat since 2010 it was sold to him for 850,000 KWD and he sold to for 50mil KWD. Mr jaffar mentioned that when he sold talabat they were receiving 25k orders a day, 0.200 fills X 250000 = 5000KWD x 30 = 150k a month! I even wonder if they still take .200 fills per order.. it used to show the amount when you checkout, now it only shows the delivery charges of the restaurant ordered from.. I really am curious how they make money.
Plus keep in mind talabat is regional not just kuwait
I agree talabat is regional, and they do have other websites provides the services in different regions. They want to monopolize.
Talabat’s high value comes from the amount of data gathered from users.
Data is valuable and can be used for many things such as marketing, social studies ect…
The data is valuable true but that’s not why it’s of high value. The data is not worth 50mil it’s the business model which they’ve been very successful with.
And lets not forget the money generated from the advertisement
Most likely, most of the money is for the intellectual property.
Intellectual property in what form?
The software. From what I can see, it is designed as a highly customizable solution, allowing one to quickly add restaurants, link those restaurants to specific locations, and each menu item can be configured. Lots of effort/research has gone into creating the entire backbone.
I am pretty sure they would be doing somewhere between 12-16 million orders each year in Kuwait alone.
Their revenue last year was 30 mil
last year was their best they did 8million orders by 7th dec 2014
thats UAE AND KUWAIT POPUALTION TOGETHER
here is some cut & paste facts which im good at 🙂
On December 7, another milestone achieved, order number 8,000,000!
Our outstanding records concluded the year with:
3,830,874 orders placed in 2014
1,755,377 Burgers
1,352,837 Sandwiches
459,592 Pizzas
810,918 Desserts
577,468 Salads
And 164,026 Frozen Yogurt were ordered
woooooooow 8mil orders thats 4mil KD if they are charging 500fils per order
and im still waiting to recieve my check to go and fix my phone screen. I HAVE 7KD IN MY POCKET AND I AM HAPPIEST GUY EVER….
Sala6a, the fact is Talabat ia making much more than that. They charge restaurants 400KD for renewal of membership plus 500 fils per order, not 150 fils^^
exactly
Thank you John for the info…
Now you can also think of selling ur site.
next… 248am! 🙂
If I ordered alot do I get some shares?
i feel bad for the founders, they sold it for a mil, and now its being sold for 50 mil. thats gotta hurt :p
yeah well the new owners did invest a lot more in the business and take it to the next level.
q8Car for 1 mil. Nice, No Taxes. I deployed cars website for script performance once, too bad I forgot I even had one.
There’s a new Forbes article about entrepreneurship in Kuwait, Kuwait can become the Silicon of the Gulf: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishacharya/2015/02/10/silicon-gulf-kuwait-moves-beyond-oil-to-nurture-entrepreneurs/
Ok so I just read that there were a bunch of owners before the current. the original creators sold it for 360,000 in 2007. the second owner sold it for 860,000 in 2010 and the current owner sold it for 50,000,000.
DOES THIS MEAN WE WILL GET ORDERS IN LESS THAN ONE HOUR AND A HALF NOW?
Is there a power outage in the whole of Kuwait?
Not all, but most of Kuwait.
How does a country with so much money still have blackouts?
Good news is that now other startups and accelerators in Kuwait will have a nice success story to look up to.
There are a lot of startups in Kuwait; I won’t link to them here (because I don’t want to spam), but you can certainly Google them and some Mark has posted about in the past, I can think of 5 right now without coffee:
1. Dishdasha Express
2. Fishfishme
3. Abidoc
4. Boxit
5. Jaribha
They have the world to look up to, start thinking globally and act locally is what will make their products reach out.
But the problem is not ideas, it’s skills, funding and an entire ecosystem that supports tech startups.
U know what made 6alabat stand out and attract foreign investment, not their presence in Kuwait or idea, it’s their scale and potential growth!….this only happened a year or 2 ago btw. if u read the press release you would notice their target was Saudi market and UAE, Kuwait was only referenced as the head quarters and being an american company now bets are they are shifting to Dubai for legal purposes.
Should 6alabat have continued to be local, no matter what success story it wont get them more than a local success story.