Trendyol Gulf: How ElAnsari Is Taking Gulf Brands Global
Trendyol Gulf CEO Mohamad ElAnsari is building a marketplace for daily Gulf shopping and helping local sellers reach global customers.
The next measure of Trendyol Gulf
Mohamad ElAnsari has a simple measure of success for Trendyol Gulf: how often customers open the app. In less than three years, the platform has onboarded 15,500 regional sellers and built a customer base of over 4 million across the region. The next step is making it as much a part of the daily routine as a trip to the local mall.
The platform launched in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in late 2023, reached the top of Saudi Arabia’s commerce app rankings within days, and expanded across all six GCC markets by November that year. By early 2025, its Gulf customer base had surpassed four million.
ElAnsari and the company behind the ambition
Founded in Istanbul in 2010, Trendyol is a multicategory e-commerce platform with its own private label, Trendyol Collection. It connects more than 250,000 Turkish sellers and global brands with over 40 million customers across local-language apps in multiple markets, including Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman.
ElAnsari is Trendyol Gulf’s CEO. Before joining Trendyol, he held leadership positions at Cenomi, Careem and Strategy&. He aims to help turn local brands into global ones.
In ElAnsari’s words
ElAnsari describes the model as “two-way commerce”, bringing international products into Gulf markets while giving local merchants a route outward. “Just as we import, we have to have the ability to also export,” he explains. “Eventually, our marketplace should be the right vehicle or channel for local sellers to be able to not only sell to other cities or other countries in the Gulf, but eventually be able to sell to Romania or to Istanbul, or to whatever city they need.”
He says sellers are not treated as competitors because “95% of our business comes from sellers.” In August 2026, Trendyol partnered with Dubai Chambers of Commerce to help Dubai-based SMEs join and grow on the platform. Under the initiative, Trendyol doubled its standard introductory commission discount from 20% to 40% for eligible SMEs referred by Dubai Chambers of Commerce and extended it from two to three months. Participating businesses also receive homepage and campaign visibility, free advertising credit, priority account management and onboarding support, alongside training through Trendyol Academy.
Trendyol Gulf and local sellers
In Saudi Arabia, Trendyol created a dedicated “Local Sellers” page, making it easier for customers to discover and shop from Saudi businesses.
ElAnsari says local sellers now account for “almost two-thirds of our sales.”
