Brands Beyond the Shelf: MENA Consumer Brands’ New Growth Playbook

Sandeep Ganediwalla and Akshay Jayaprakasan

October 7, 2026

Report

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The grocery store in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is losing its monopoly on demand, and brands no longer need a retailer’s approval to reach the shopper.

Quick platforms now carry 66-75% of online grocery GMV across the three markets, up from 13-30% in 2021. Online grocery has grown from $3.7 Bn in 2023 to $6 Bn in 2025, a 27% CAGR, while offline grocery has kept growing alongside it, from $95 Bn to $100 Bn. Grocery is still only 6% online, the least digitised of the major retail categories, and on the current Redseer build penetration approaches 10% by 2028.

Redseer Strategy Consultants believes this shift has changed three things for brands at once: distribution, the shelf and launch economics. Access has been democratised, discovery has moved to search, ranking and retail media, and a launch can now be tested in one city on one platform before the big distribution bet is made.

Easier access also means access alone no longer sets a brand apart. Distribution used to be the prerequisite for proof. Increasingly, proof is becoming the prerequisite for distribution.

This Redseer Strategy Consultants report draws on our proprietary MEA Retail Market Intelligence, our Voice of Customer survey and brand-side contributions from homegrown challenger brands to show how the brand playbook is changing, what it looks like in practice and where the next phase will test it.

For brand and category leads, the question is which of your lines are selling on pull, and which are selling on presence.

REPORT CONTENT

1. The store is losing its monopoly on demand

How a new demand layer of impulse, top-up and urgent missions has opened up beyond the physical store
Why grocery is the last big offline pool: the largest wallet and one of the least digitised
How food delivery built the rails that online grocery inherited
Why demand is expanding instead of substituting, with the total market growing from $99 Bn to $106 Bn

2. The five-way win, through the brand lens

Why shoppers, digital-first platforms, omnichannel retailers, brands and investors are all gaining while the pie grows
How digital-first players have reached critical mass and now lead online grocery in every market
Distribution: access has become easier, and winning has become more granular
The shelf: physical shelves are periodically negotiated, digital shelves are continuously re-ranked
Launch economics: launches are becoming modular, measurable and reversible

3. Brand playbooks in the real world

How a better-for-you chocolate brand-built rate of sale on quick platforms, then converted that proof into listings at leading omnichannel retailers
How a bamboo tissue brand facing a category leader with ten facings in the aisle competes at one image each on the app
How a cold-pressed oils brand fixed a comprehension problem with a week of new imagery, clearer copy and corrected category mapping
The new brand playbook, and the three pressures that define the next phase

KNOW

Why getting listed is now the easy part: Brands can list on platforms directly, and reviews and ratings decide which product scales. The report explains why this puts more brands on the same level and what separates them once they are there.

Why the digital shelf is more even, but not free: A challenger no longer needs equal shelf space to compete for attention. Rank, media and promotion still cost real money, and the report shows why they belong in the plan from launch.

How online proof earns physical distribution: The currency that buys physical shelf space used to be a cheque. Increasingly it is rate of sale, with the buyer seeing sell-out evidence in around three to six months instead of a deck and a promise.

Why learning loops are the hidden advantage: A planogram takes a season to change. A product page can change in an afternoon. The report sets out the e-commerce and quick commerce fundamentals that are the highest-returning work a young brand does.

Where the next phase gets harder: Private labels make up over 25% of sales for large GCC retailers, platforms are scaling their own product lines, and a brand with half its revenue on one platform is underwriting someone else’s runway.

REDSEER PERSPECTIVE

Redseer Strategy Consultants believes the next phase for MENA consumer brands will be shaped less by how many listings a brand holds and more by how fast its lines sell where they are listed.

The winning playbook has three parts. Use digital to prove: test demand, content, price, pack and positioning. Use physical to scale, because the majority of the grocery wallet still sits in stores. Then manage both shelves permanently, as physical distribution and digital discovery increasingly reinforce each other.

Brands that still budget for platforms as a one-off experiment have mispriced them. Platform shelves are recurring infrastructure and platforms are becoming competitors, so the brands that last will be those that own what cannot be copied in ninety days.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS

Brand and Category Leads: Separate the lines that are selling on pull from the lines that are selling on presence, and decide where distribution should follow.

Founders of Challenger and Homegrown Brands: See how online proof converts into physical listings, on terms a young brand can survive.

Marketing, E-commerce and Trade Marketing Heads: Plan for a shelf that is continuously re-ranked, where rank, retail media and promotion are standing costs.

Consumer Investors: Assess brands on rate of sale and platform concentration, since capital raised is not a reliable predictor of survival.

Retailers and Platforms: Understand how brands are sequencing digital and physical shelves, and what that means for assortment and retail media.

STRATEGIC TAKEAWAYS

This Redseer Strategy Consultants report is designed for decision-makers responsible for brand growth, category strategy and go-to-market.

Use digital to prove demand before making the big distribution bet

Use physical to scale once rate of sale has made the case

Budget for platforms as permanent infrastructure from launch

Build what cannot be copied in ninety days as platforms scale their own lines

Watch platform concentration as a point of failure

Apply the honest test of growth: if your fastest-selling lines are your least distributed, you have real pull. If your most-distributed lines are your slowest, you are coasting on listings.