Mohammad Al Razaz

Can you provide an overview of OTO’s operations in Saudi Arabia and its main milestones and highlights in the last few years?

Launched in March 2020, OTO has quickly become one of the fastest-growing technological companies to emerge out of Saudi Arabia and the region with a mission to build the shipping gateway of the internet. We build shipping management solutions to help retailers and brands ship, manage, track, and return all their online orders with over 200 shipping carriers from one consolidated dashboard. Today, OTO is recognized as the largest integrator for shipping companies across the MENA region and one of the largest globally in terms of the number of integrations.

What are OTO’s competitive advantages enabling it to become the largest integrator for shipping services in the region?

OTO’s approach to developing solutions sets us apart in the logistics industry. The concept for OTO was inspired by my experience managing a last-mile delivery company. I aspired to operationalize logistics by drawing from the business models of ride-hailing services, which utilize freelancers, and adapting this model to the transportation of packages. For that reason, we developed OTO, a technology that enables the quick shipping of online orders directly from offline stores. The name OTO stands for “online to offline,” reflecting our efficient process of fulfilling online orders from offline stores. Additionally, in 2021, we decided to raise a seed funding round and successfully secured 3 million USD, marking the largest seed investment for a sales-focused company in the MENA region. We started creating a comprehensive solution for SMEs, which led to the integration of seven distinct technologies into a single platform. This platform encompasses the entire order process, warehouse, and last-mile management systems, along with the integration of various shipping carriers, a shipping aggregation feature for direct purchase of shipping labels, driver management, and a return management system. This is what makes OTO unique, not just in Saudi Arabia but across the region. Moreover, we pride ourselves on offering the cheapest shipping labels and have expanded our services to include international shipping, enabling local handmade goods to reach global markets. That is why I believe in the power of logistics.