Cobone a New Group Buying Startup From Jabbar to Compete with GoNabit

It seems the growing success of Dubai based e-commerce group buying startup GoNabit has opened Jabbar group appetite to enter the market with a new startup called Cobone.

Jabbar group which emerged after Yahoo’s acquisition of maktoob receiving an investment of 20 million USD from the owners of maktoob includes the following sites: souq (auction site) ikoo ( online ad network) CashU (pre paid online payment card) Tahadi (Arabic games), Sukar ( private e-commerce club)

GoNabit is founded by ex-bayt’s head of its venture arm Intilaqat Dan Stuart and has also received investment from Bayt which is a majority share holder. Here is our recent interview with Dan.

In few words, Group buying works by offering time limited deals, if enough people join to buy the deal everyone gets it, if not, no one is charged. The key is to virally promote the deal across social media and email, which help buyers close the deal and helps the site grow  virally.

Both Bayt ( the leading regional job recruitment site) and Jabbar, has the NewYork based Tiger Global Management a hedge fund as the an investor, Jabbar’s CEO is Jordanian entrepreneur and angel investor Samih Toukan.

(via the nextweb)