Truecaller Insights’ MENA report for the fourth quarter (Q4) of last year showed that Truecaller received more than 41.6m calls to and from e-commerce companies.
According to the report, the e-commerce market is dominated by a number of local companies, such as Souq, Dubizzle/OLX, Edfa3ly, and Jumia.
Most of the calls made through Truecaller were to and from these four companies, where Souq accounted for 60% of the number of calls. Edfa3ly came in second place by accounting for 16% of the calls, followed by Dubizzle/OLX, which possessed 15% of calls. Jumia, the least of the four aforementioned companies, accounted for 6% of the calls. International companies, such as Amazon and eBay, showed less presence in the region, where Amazon and eBay accounted for 2% and 1% respectively.
In terms of the number of incoming calls compared to outgoing calls received by e-commerce customers, calls related to Souq reached 25m calls from 1 October 2016 to 31 December, while Edfa3ly calls amounted to 6.8m calls, and OLX reached 6.4m calls.
On the other hand, Egypt possessed the largest market share in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of the number of calls related to electronic commerce, accounting for 84.5% of the total. Jordan came in second place, accounting for 10% of the total number of calls from and to e-commerce companies. In fact, Jordan’s number of calls per capita is close to that of Egypt, since the former has a population of 6.5 million and the latter has 90 million. Iraq ranked third by accounting for 3.84% of e-commerce calls in the region.
In terms of the demand on requesting car rides through smartphones, Truecaller received 2m calls during Q4 2016 from and to transportation network companies. Uber accounted for the largest share of calls, possessing 58% of the total. Careem accounted for 22% of calls, and Allo Taxi Company for 20%.
When looking at incoming vs. outgoing calls over this entire period, we see that Uber made 722,000 calls to its users in Q4 2016, while 422,000 calls were made by users, bringing the total to 1.14 million calls between Uber and its users. Careem users received 347,000 calls from the company during the same period, while they called the company 90,000 times, bringing the total number of calls from and to the company to 437,000. Finally, Allo users received 305,000 calls from the company in Q4 2016 and called the company 103,000 times, for a total of 408,000 calls.
The data of where these calls were placed shows that Egypt dominates the Middle Eastern countries, thanks to its large population and its number of Truecaller users. Lebanon also shows an extremely strong affinity for car-sharing services considering its small population.
The data in the report about Q4 2016 was collected anonymously in a way that does not specify the identity of users through incoming and outgoing calls to companies that provide e-commerce services in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Tunisia, and Yemen.
The data was classified from the user to the company or vice versa, whether related to purchases, complaints, customer service, delivery, or other services. This vision is based primarily on the internal data of Truecaller.
