By James Mathew – Arabian Business
—
Distichain reveals launch date for e-commerce platforms for the hotel sector and agri products.
Distichain has agreements to set up two new marketplaces – an Australia-based one for agri products and a US-based one for the hotel industry.
Distichain, a UAE-based B2B e-commerce platform that provides public and private enterprises with tailor-made marketplaces, is expanding into the United States and Australia.
The start-up has agreements to set up two new marketplaces – an Australia-based one for agri products and a US-based one for the hotel industry.
While its proposed platform with 8Corners – an agribusiness marketplace to facilitate Australian farm producers to sell their goods globally and directly – will be launched this month, its partnership platform with HotelSupplyB2B, the marketplace by a US-based hotel venture for the hospitality industry servicing linking hotels and their suppliers, will be launched next month.
In an exclusive interview to Arabian Business, Haisam Jamal, co-founder and CEO of Distichain, said: “Our trade engine, our ecosystem, and our customers are all set and in October we launched our first marketplace, extrabeaute.com.
“This will be followed by many more along with two new marketplaces – 8Corners and Hotel Supply B2B – scheduled to be launched in November and December respectively,” Jamal said, adding that these three marketplaces are set to deliver 60 percent of 2021 revenue.
Jamal revealed that Distichain has also entered into an agreement with Africa Agritech Ltd, an organization funded by the UK government to facilitate African agribusiness sales.
“We see multiple opportunities in the agribusiness sector across the different regions.”
Distichain recently won first place in the Village Capital, PayPal and MetLife Foundation’s accelerator program Finance Forward MENA for early stage ventures working on financial health challenges.
[ Distichain co-founder and CEO Haisam Jamal and Lynn Itani ]
It was the only start-up from the UAE selected by peer entrepreneurs to receive equity-free investment from the program and will receive $45,000 in grant funding from MetLife Foundation.
Jamal said while Distichain is looking to secure, simplify, and empower B2B trade via numerous marketplace launches for customers, it will not own the marketplace but deliver the technology to create and operate marketplaces as a service.
“This allows us to focus our efforts on developing and improving the functionality, increasing the service provider ecosystem, and increasing its customer base.Accordingly, we will be able to address much more and much faster a larger portion of the $51 trillion in global trade, of which only 13 percent is currently done digitally,” Jamal revealed.
According to a report by Accenture in partnership with FinTech Hive, fintech will account for 8 percent of Middle East financial services revenue by 2022.
Jamal also said the company expected its CAGR (compound annual growth rate) to be at least 97 percent in the upcoming five years.
Distichain is looking to secure, simplify, and empower B2B trade via numerous marketplace launches for customers
“This will be delivered by adding more marketplaces, and also by the marketplaces themselves growing in revenue as our business model is a shared revenue model. We expect to be cashflow positive within 12 months and from there, growth will drive an extremely promising profitability.” he said.
Jamal also revealed that the company has partnered with banking and fintech companies to create a digital wallet for each registered marketplace user.
“Sending and receiving of funds to and from our wallets would cost only a few US dollars, yet funds in the wallets facilitate escrow functionality for all trading commitments at no cost to our users. This ensures that all transactions on Distichain marketplaces are 100 percent secure,” Jamal said.
Jamal also revealed that e-procuring will be another huge opportunity for Distichain, as its platform would help bring transparency, smart purchases, competitive pricing and fast transaction completion. Procurement as a service is currently estimated at $6.5 billion in 2020
