noon.com, the region’s homegrown digital marketplace, hosted a gala event celebrating the brightest and boldest sellers in the region. Noon’s Seller Summit UAE offered sellers an exclusive look at upcoming launches, insights into noon’s biggest ever Yellow Friday Sale, and noon’s Founder Mohamed Alabbar who drove a noon motorbike onstage to deliver a powerful keynote.
Hundreds of sellers joined the event, which was held in line with social distancing measures in the beautiful setting of the Dubai Opera.
The annual Seller Awards were the highlight of the evening and saw 13 of the region’s brightest sellers handed trophies by noon’s CEO, Faraz Khalid, and Founder, Mohamed Alabbar. Among those were EMAX (Power Retailer), Shoexpress (Top Customer Rated Seller), L’Oreal Middle East (Most Innovative Partner), and Home Box (Best noon Seller).
The event also celebrated the rise of local-based entrepreneurship through noon’s Mahali program, created to give local sellers, Emirati and Saudi micro-entrepreneurs tailored support and guidance to help their business dreams and ambitions grow. Local Mahali seller SpeedyBee was awarded noon’s Top Customer Rated Mahali Seller Award of 2021.
Noon’s engineering team detailed the important progress that has been made in terms of tools available to sellers. Robert O’Kirwan, Head of Product and Alex Nadalin, SVP Technology, told the SME-packed audience that after listening to sellers – noon has worked overtime to alleviate friction. Improvements include an upgraded Catalog system, a new reputation management dashboard, and brand stores to allow sellers to showcase their brand as they wish, using noon as their platform.
Details about noon’s largest sale of the year, Yellow Friday, featured prominently at the summit. Noon’s Yellow Friday Sale is the noon’s flagship event and generates a massive demand spike for noon’s sellers with customers looking for the best deals of the year. noon’s Yellow Friday Sale 2021, which covers all of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, will begin on 22nd November and end on 28th November.
Ali Kafil-Hussain told the audience that noon has “come such a long way since our first Yellow Friday in 2018 where we started with 1,000 sellers and 5000 brands. Now in our fourth Yellow Friday, we will have over 5000 sellers and 50,000 brands participating.”
Neha Choudhary, VP Onsite Operations, said: “During the build-up to this year’s Yellow Friday Sale, we will have a huge 11/11 sale and reveal a ton of surprises, including exclusive offers and never-seen-before deals. This will set us up for 2021’s Yellow Friday Sale which will be the largest one yet.”
Closing the event, noon’s Founder Mohamed Alabbar drove a noon Food bike onto the stage, much to the delight of the audience, before removing his helmet and delivering a 15-minute keynote speech.
“This industry is the future of our lifetime, our children, and our society. It’s the future of our jobs. It is the state of mind of beyond tomorrow. The world is changing. Our businesses are changing”
Mr. Alabbar went on to discuss noon’s future strategy: “The ecosystem we are building has a mission of bringing our cities online. All businesses, services and products will be accessible digitally through integrated platforms. This is our new business! We have built an incredible delivery system, we have built the technology, we are amazing people, and most of all – we are brave!”
“I’m so thankful for the focus and specific passion to guard this amazing bright, brilliant, super child that is noon at just four years old. I get quite emotional. I think how lucky I am to have all of you in my life- your trust, support, belief in the brilliant mission that we are on.”
Noon.com was created to serve the region, empowering and championing local businesses with innovation, technology, and support. Local businesses can choose to use noon to support their business, tapping into noon’s mass customer database, and utilizing the secure payment platform.