Guest post by Andrew Quan, soon to become our ambassador in Australia. I recently got married, and for those who have done so before, you know very well the process required to go through various suppliers to get the ‘best quote’. Everything from florists, hairdressers, suits / dresses / attire, catering, music / DJ services… you name it. With so many quotes flying around, we used a large ‘master’ spread sheet to manage contacts and inclusions across each vendor quote… needless to say this was a very manual task.

Imagine a way to centrally manage the way you get and accept quotes from suppliers. Imagine a way for businesses to come to you, rather than you going out individually to each of them. That’s what PickAQuote.com.au tries to address with its online service offering.

I’ve sat down with Marcus Lim, the co-founder of PickAQuote.com.au, based in Sydney Australia. The guys at PickAQuote are building a central on-line marketplace to streamline the supplier quotation process. Their business model is relatively simple:

1. Consumers post their requests on-line for free
2. Competitive quotes come in
3. The consumer picks the best quote available

Revenues come from quotation fees (when a business responds to a job with a formal quote) as well as success fees (when the business is accepted for a job). Customers may also receive some ‘kick-back’ revenue ($10) for each successful referral made, as well as $5 for every job completed.

There is certainly great potential for this organisation to be a successful – the real questions to address are how to achieve critical mass (for both supply and demand), how to leverage economies of scale, as well as how to market an on-line product to a typically off-line activity.

PickAQuote has been actively marketing on national radio channels, and have been mentioned on prominent newspapers in Australia. Given such media coverage, the direction this business is heading is one of many examples of an innovative Aussie start-up aiming to disrupt the status quo. Expect to see more innovative Asia Pacific start-up / business model examples on this blog in the future.

E-commerce has been taking off in the MENA region. The Group buying phenomenon (Groupon effect) is the latest twist in the evolution of MENA’s online user preferences. Let’s see how this global trend is unfolding itself in the Middle East & North Africa.

The online retail and shopping market in Egypt epitomizes the regional trend. According to a Nielsen study in 2009, only 2% of Internet users in Egypt purchased something online at that time. In an earlier post, we covered Tazkarty, a one-stop-shop, hassle-free online booking system for all social events, restaurants, discos, etc.

The ingenuity of group offerings combined with an Arab-ization of a commonly used English term “offer” resulted in “Offerna” (“our offer”), which stands for a group discount from local vendors if enough number of interested people sign up for it.  Once enough people show interest, the offer goes live and all signed-up people are then able to redeem their e-vouchers until the announced deadline or if it sells out. If not enough are interested, all signed-up people get their money back.

Offerna is the first and so far most successful of group buying sites in Egypt, leaving behind bigger players such as GoNabit.com and Cobone.com. Launched in March 2011, Offerna became a big hit very quickly, featuring deals from Egypt’s top retailers, restaurants, and service providers. Two weeks after starting an intensive marketing campaign, Offerna’s Facebook page attracted some 17,000 fans (and more than 171,000 as of October 3, 2011), according to one of the co-founders. When the website finally launched, Offerna was receiving an average of 50 requests per e-voucher.

Anything from an Italian ice-cream to car-care services delivered to your home can be found on Offerna. Previous offers – now sold out – included  50% discounts on premium accessories from Kipling, 70% on sushi from Itsumi, and a romantic night cruise of the Nile on a yacht with more than 50% discount. E-vouchers that sell out the fastest are either food/beverage or clothing deals.

And just like Tazkarty, Offerna caters to Egyptian online customers. As many online customers in Egypt either do not have or are wary of sharing credit card details online due to security reasons, these customers are sceptical and prefer to pay cash upon delivery (for an additional 10 EGP).

Another edge (to which its relatively fast-achieved success might be attributed) of Offerna, as compared to its local and regional rivals, is the fact that it is available both in Arabic and English. Currently, e-vouchers are retail only, but Offerna plans to include group deals on furniture, gadgets, etc. Offerna’s other plans include its expansion (from its base of Cairo/Alexandria) to the rest of MENA, starting with Saudi Arabia and launching a mobile applications for iPhone, Blackberry and Android smart phones. At this moment, Offerna is privately funded.

UPDATE (10.10.2011): Ideavelopers, venture capital arm of EFG-Hermes (the largest investment bank in MENA), responsible for managing Technology Development Fund (TDF), has concluded (as of 09.10.2011) a Series A investment round in Offerna.