They’ll be amongst the first to sell imported iPad 2 in the UAE. That too, at a reasonable price.
While doing research for my “looking to buy iPad 2 in Dubai” blog last week, I came across a site called JadoPado- yes, that really is the name. The website only contained a place holder which made me wonder if this was another “lets make some quick cash overnight” kind of setup. However, their Twitter account seemed active and I decided to get in touch with them to find out a bit more.
To my surprise, the owner, Mr. Omar Kassim responded almost immediately and was open to any questions and concerns I had. From my limited discussions with him, JadoPado appears to be a business with a plan. The following are excerpts from my discussions with him.
1) JadoPado is a strange name- What made you decide on this name? Is there a history behind it? Or was every other domain name you wanted already taken?
We were looking for something catchy and my sister actually came up with the name. JadoPado, when pronounced slightly differently to the way we say it, is the equivalent of calling someone a “fatty” in some North Indian dialects.
2) Is this is a completely family owned business?
The business is currently funded and owned by my family. We run al bogari Holdings (www.albogari.com), a trading and investment firm. Out of Sri Lanka (where we’re from at least in terms of Nationality – Indian culturally!), we run a diversified conglomerate called Expolanka Holdings with operations across Asia and some parts of Africa.
In more traditional terms, you could consider me to be the founder – but really it’s been a massive team effort from everyone who’s previously been a part of al bogari Holdings and those who came on board specifically to bring JadoPado into being!
3) When do you expect to be up and running. And why would someone shop from JadoPado instead of, say, nahel.com?
We’re pushing to do a beta launch early next week – but with a very limited product range. We’ll continue to add to this across all categories in the upcoming weeks and months.
In terms of what I think will separate us, we’re trying to avoid selling anything that we don’t have in inventory. If I am not mistaken other e-commerce stores generally work on not holding any inventory and place orders with their suppliers when an order comes in. Holding inventory carries a fair amount of risk, but we’ve tried to offset this by leveraging on a few partnerships, but at the same time investing in inventory. This should allow us to turn orders around a little faster.
Also, our delivery system at this point will provide a customer with the ability to choose a 3 hour time window across 3 days, including the current day. This is to try to satisfy the instant gratification that most of us feel from time to time!
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