Honours
The story
Hosam Arab worked in engineering, advisory and private equity and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School before co-founding Namshi, an online fashion retailer for Gulf shoppers, in 2011 as one of Rocket Internet's first regional ventures. At Namshi he spent eight years trying to move customers off cash on delivery: it was 85% of transactions at launch and still 75% eight years later, despite discounts for card payments and fees on cash. He concluded that shoppers did not trust online retailers enough to pay up front. After Namshi was fully acquired by Emaar Malls, he left in 2019 and launched Tabby with Daniil Barkalov, letting shoppers receive orders before paying and split costs into four interest-free instalments. Saudi Arabia became Tabby's largest market and the company moved its headquarters to Riyadh. Tabby has been profitable since 2023 and in September 2026 raised $233 million at a $6.5 billion valuation, with 25 million registered users and more than $18 billion in annual transaction volume.
