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What's Not?

Cash is still the King
  • A high preference for Cash on Delivery (CoD) persists in Kuwait, with some players reporting more than 40-60% of orders are on a CoD basis. This leads to high costs of operation and dependence on logistics partners for cash collections and returns
Last-mile logistics still underdeveloped
  • Despite being relatively smaller geography, same-day deliveries aren’t commonplace in Kuwait owing to high cost of logistics operations and undeveloped last-mile logistics services.
Acquisitions and consolidation likely along the line
  • As players work towards growing in scale in Kuwait and in the GCC, those who cannot grow may get acquired. Also, the global e-commerce giants are looking at acquiring or partnering with local players to reduce their time to market in the GCC.
Reducing the cost of customer acquisition
  • As businesses fight for profitable growth, they are increasingly having to focus on retaining customers acquired at a high cost in the initial years. Businesses need to innovate to acquire and retain new customers other than through discounting their offering.
Limited availability of IT talent in the local market
  • Limitation around the availability of IT talent in local market forces most Kuwaiti start-ups to outsource IT  development thereby increasing the initial costs of development as well as posing reliability challenges. Similarly, the lack of e-commerce specialists in the local market poses a challenge.
what are the challenges for e-commerce sector in Kuwait?