RIYADH: MENA’s first man of the internet Ronaldo Mouchawar may have sold the firm he set up for $580 million, but has the same drive he had when he joined his first startup 20 years ago.
The Syrian entrepreneur built the largest online marketplace in the region, Souq.com, in 2005 and 12 years later sold it to US tech giant Amazon.
But rather than sunning himself on the most exclusive beaches around the world, he stayed on to become vice president of Amazon MENA.
Souq now attracts more than 45 million customers per month and offers 9.5 million products on its platform, ranging from consumer electronics, household goods, fashion brands to baby products. It employs 4,500 staff.
Mouchawar’s career is closely linked with the development of the web in the region.
Born in Aleppo, Syria, to a family of traders and engineers, Mouchawar was a basketball star at local team Jalaa SC Aleppo, before heading to the US’ Northeastern University in Boston in the late 1980s to study a bachelor’s and later master’s degree in computer science.
He remained in the US, working at…
