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The UAE's leading classifieds platform appoints new General Manager of Motors, General Manager of New Business/Director of Product and Head of Display Advertising
Dubai, UAE - dubizzle, the UAE's leading classifieds platform, has announced the appointment of three new senior members of staff to further support its growth in the UAE; Jean-Pierre Mondalek as General Manager of Motors, Vineet Singla as General Manager of New Business and Director of Product, and Anthony Blackford as Head of Display Advertising.
Dominating the online classifieds space across four verticals - property, motors, jobs and items for sale - dubizzle has experienced consistent annual growth since its humble beginnings in 2005. Now, with a team of over 160, the platform is expanding and investing in talent to provide users with increased value and an improved overall user experience.
"As we continue to grow and expand our presence across the UAE, we have aligned our business model accordingly. The addition of seasoned professionals to the dubizzle team supports our strategic growth plans and we are confident that under their leadership, we will continue to further strengthen dubizzle's presence and offering in the UAE," commented Barry Judge, General Manager at dubizzle.
As the former General Manager of Uber Technologies in the UAE, Jean-Pierre Mondalek built and led a team that grew the marketplace over 50 times its original size in 18 months. Prior to Uber, Mondalek was a professional technology investor in the US and UK and a co-founder of Autohaus Middle East in Dubai. Bringing valued digital marketplace experience and passion for the automotive sector to his role at dubizzle, Mondalek's responsibilities will include running dubizzle's Motors section and implementing data-driven strategies to further drive growth and user engagement.
"Two years ago, dubizzle monetized the motoring section of the platform and has since experienced tremendous growth in both listings and leads - making it the most liquid automotive marketplace in the UAE. As a Dubai native, I'm excited to join dubizzle and look forward to delivering innovative digital solutions to the UAE automotive sector that offer consumers and dealers the best return on investment, and of course, the best quality motoring ads for our established and growing user base," commented Mondalek, General Manager of Motors, dubizzle.
Formerly, as Chief Product Officer at OLX South Asia, Vineet Singla built the product and led it to grow over 25 times in the span of three years. Singla joins dubizzle as the General Manager of New Business and the Director of Product for classifieds in UAE. His responsibilities include evolving dubizzle's Mobile product, driving growth of the Jobs section and services, and supporting the enhancement of the Properties, Autos and Items for Sale services.
Prior to OLX, Singla held various senior product roles at Yahoo, Campus Management and Sage. Most recently, he led the partnership between Yahoo and Bing for global search advertising products at Yahoo, California, a $2 billion internet advertising business across 34 markets.
Commenting on his new position, Singla said, "dubizzle is a leader in the UAE's online classifieds market, with the number one downloaded Android app in the Lifestyle category and the number two downloaded iOS app in the Shopping category across the Middle East. I am passionate about creating best-in-class mobile products with features such as - profiles, chat and in-app 'make an offer'. These features streamline negotiations between buyers and sellers. I'll be working closely with my team on similar projects to further improve our product and enhance the user experience that dubizzlers are already used to."
Anthony Blackford joins dubizzle with over five years of advertising and sales experience at eBay Classifieds Group, working across Gumtree.com, the largest Classifieds website in the UK. Through his extensive experience in the classifieds and digital advertising, Blackford's responsibilities will include managing the advertising sales team, leading strategic advertising plans whilst building strong client/agency relationships with all industry leaders connected with dubizzle.
As the Head of Display Advertising for dubizzle, Blackford will manage 15 of the 30 dubizzle team members who make up the platform's advertising sales team. "dubizzle has one of the most developed advertising propositions available in the UAE market with a huge amount of 1st party audience data. Leveraging this data to connect our users and advertisers is at the heart of what we are trying to achieve. Last year at Arab Net dubizzle launched native ads which was a huge success. Now we've streamlined our programmatic offering which is centered around offering premium ad units to highly targeted audience groups, ensuring view-ability is key. I look forward to enhancing these products more whilst driving the sales team forward, ensuring our clients and users receive the best service through dubizzle," commented Blackford.
dubizzle has been ranked as the 9th most visited website in the UAE (*according to SimilarWeb in May 2016), with over 5 million monthly active users. We reach almost 60% of the internet population in the UAE who visit twice a month for an average time of 16.5 minutes per visit, with over 60,000 new listings going live every day!
2015 was a great year for the dubizzle brand in the UAE, dubizzle made it to the top five most searched UAE brands on Google Trends Report for 2015, and the fourth most Top of Mind brand in the UAE by Business Gulf Review, behind Emirates Airlines, Etihad Airways & Etisalat Telecom.
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About dubizzle:
dubizzle is the leading classifieds website for users in the United Arab Emirates. Since its launch in 2005, dubizzle has become the number one platform for users to buy, sell, or find anything in their community. A community where underused goods are redistributed to fill a new need, and become wanted again, where non-product assets such as space, skills and money are exchanged and traded in new ways that don't always require centralized institutions or 'middlemen'.
dubizzle is an OLX company: OLX is the world's leading classifieds platform in growth markets and is available in more than 45 countries and over 50 languages. OLX connects local people to buy, sell or exchange used goods and services by making it fast, easy and free for anyone to post a listing through their mobile phone or on the web. Every month, hundreds of millions of people in local markets around the world are already using OLX's online marketplace to find and sell a wide range of products, including furniture, musical instruments, sporting goods, cars, kids and baby items, motorcycles, cameras, mobile phones, property and much more. OLX operates in fast-growing markets around the globe, where OLX helps people improve their lives through smart person-to-person trade. OLX Arabia has an actively expanding existing presence in the MENA region in Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. OLX employs more than 1,200 committed employees worldwide located in places like Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Lisbon, Manila, Nairobi, Poznan, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Media enquiries:
Abdallah Touqan
Director PR, Communications & Events
Abdallah@dubizzle.com
+971 55 9866 891
OR
Grayling PR
dubizzle@grayling.com
+971 (4) 360 0527
© Press Release 2016
