Ananas e-commerce, a marketplace based in Serbia, bought 100% ownership in the Macedonian company Vebspot from Payten. In this way, Ananas became the owner of the online shopping brands Grouper.mk and Paopao.mk.
On the Macedonian market, Grouper.mk is known for its business of selling vouchers for services, while the recently launched site Paopao.mk is a marketplace for online purchase of products. The acquisition of Grouper, as the leading e-commerce player on the Macedonian market with almost 300,000 users and 3,000 merchants, represents Ananas’ first step towards regional expansion. This acquisition will enable Ananas to quickly penetrate the Macedonian market with the introduction of Ananas’ new concepts and novelties.
Marketplace Ananas is part of the Delta Holding corporation based in Belgrade. The first sales on this site took place in the summer of 2021, and today Ananas offers its customers more than 150,000 different products through a branched network of over 200 partners.
In less than a year, Ananas.rs was visited by more than one million customers. Launching Ananas, the Delta Holding company announced its ambition to create a regional giant in online trade and its willingness to invest about 100 million euros in this project in the first five years.
“The market in Macedonia, customers, but also online sellers, with this acquisition get a safe, loyal and long-term partner, ready to invest in the development of this business, but also the development of the entire e-commerce in Macedonia. We have a plan to offer the largest marketplace in this country with a wide range of products, safe and fast delivery, secure payment and many innovative solutions that we now know only in more developed markets”, said Marko Carevic, CEO of Ananas.
At the start of their business, Ananas announced that the Serbian market is only a starting point, and that the ambition of the shareholders and the company itself is for this marketplace to appear on the markets of the Western Balkans region.
“With the reputation and strength of Delta Holding behind us, but also with the innovative business model brought not only by Ananas but also by its global partners such as Boston Consulting Group, HTEC and others, we are confident that we will bring a new shopping experience to the customers of the entire region, and to the sellers of a reliable partners and a place where they can implement the most ambitious business plans”, says Marko Carević.
