Iraq is becoming one of the most remarkable e-commerce markets in the Middle East with its rapidly growing young population, increasing internet penetration, and social commerce-driven consumer habits. However, for years, the inadequacy of the country’s logistics and fulfillment infrastructure has been seen as one of the biggest obstacles preventing brands from fully benefiting from this potential. Iraq-based fulfillment and logistics company Sandoog aims to close this gap with its technology-based operational model.
The company manages operations such as warehousing, order management, last-mile delivery, return processes, and cash on delivery (COD) collection under one roof, enabling local and international brands to enter the Iraqi market without making a physical investment. Thanks especially to its open API system, which integrates with platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce, brands can start selling across Iraq within a few days.
According to Sandoog’s co-founders Ahmed Malik and Mustafa Al Obaidi, the Iraqi market is no longer only an area where social commerce is growing; it is also a candidate to become one of the new centers of regional e-commerce operations. With its developed fulfillment infrastructure and real-time operations management, the company aims to grow both in Iraq and in the broader Middle Eastern market.
Sandoog was featured on WORLDEF E-COMMERCE. We spoke with Sandoog Co-Founder and CMO Mustafa Al Obaidi about many topics, from Iraq’s e-commerce transformation to the company’s regional goals.
How do you position Sandoog’s fulfillment services in the Iraqi and Middle Eastern market?
Iraq is one of the last large untapped e-commerce frontiers in the Middle East a country of 46 million people with rising internet penetration, a young population, and a deeply social-commerce-driven buying culture. Yet for years, the logistics infrastructure to serve that demand simply didn’t exist in a reliable and scalable way. My partner, Ahmed Malik and I, Mustafa Al Obaidi, saw an opportunity to develop Sandoog as a solution to close that gap.
We position ourselves as the bridge that enables brands from around the world – whether based in Beirut, Dubai, Istanbul, or London – to enter Iraq and start selling directly to consumers nationwide, without requiring physical presence in the country. Storage, fulfilment, last-mile delivery, COD collection: we handle all of it. The biggest advantage we offer is speed to market. A brand can connect its store to our system via our open API, ship us its inventory, and start delivering to customers across Iraq within days.
How do you optimise warehousing given Iraq’s infrastructure challenges?
We focus on the realities on the ground, not the ideal. We’ve responded by investing strategically in our internal systems: barcode scanning, real-time inventory tracking, and a fulfilment centre model that minimises human error. We also keep our processes lean and our teams well-trained to global standards, because technology can only take you so far when the local market has yet to fully adopt modern solutions. Local knowledge and culture are part of the logistics infrastructure in Iraq, and incorporating that into our Sandoog DNA over the years has helped differentiate us in the market.
What are the biggest fulfilment challenges specific to Iraq?
There are a few that define the market. Firstly, Banking infrastructure is limited, which is why COD dominates and why cash flow management is a constant operational concern to merchants. Secondly, the security and regulatory environment has historically been volatile, though it’s significantly more stable now than even five years ago. Thirdly, customer expectations around communication are based around social-selling – The average customer wants human contact to place an order or to confirm delivery and transact the order.
We tackled these challenges by combining technology with a human-first delivery experience: We offer a local call centre service for before and during delivery, we onboard local delivery partners who know their streets, and we handle the full cash collection and reconciliation cycle on behalf of our merchants in a highly transparent way. Fully tracked in real-time and visible through our client platform and open API.
How do you evaluate COD in Middle Eastern e-commerce, and how do you manage it operationally?
COD isn’t a workaround – it’s the dominant payment model in Iraq and across much of the region. Any fulfilment provider that treats it as a legacy problem to be eliminated is misreading the market. The trust deficit with online payments is still real and legitimate, but has improved slightly over the last 2 years. Until that changes at a structural level, through better banking access, digital payment adoption, and consumer confidence -COD will remain king. For us, managing COD well is a competitive advantage.
We collect cash on delivery, reconcile it, and pay it out to merchants through their preferred method. The operational complexity of tracking which orders were paid, managing failed deliveries, preventing cash leakage – is where many operators struggle. We’ve built our systems specifically around this, and it’s one of the core reasons brands trust us with their Iraq operations.
How does technology differentiate Sandoog’s operations?
We built Sandoog Centre, our merchant dashboard, to give brands full real-time visibility: inventory levels, order status, delivery tracking, return management, live reports. And if a client is integrated through our open API, they can integrate directly from Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom stores without manual order entry. This matters enormously because manual processes at scale are where errors compound.
Beyond the merchant-facing tools, we use a custom proprietary WMS system internally to our warehousing and fulfilment activities. For a market like Iraq, where data has historically been scarce, giving merchants analytics on their inventory and delivery performance, return rates, and regional demand patterns is something genuinely new and valuable.
How does Sandoog ease cross-border e-commerce entry for brands?
A good use-case to answer this question is of our client Salviv, a health category e-commerce brand from Jordan. They needed to enter Iraq but had no local entity, operations, delivery network and COD collection that they can rely on. With Sandoog, they successfully transfered their inventory to us, and we handled everything from storage, to call confirmation to delivering their products to their customer’s doorstep.
This reliability allowed them to scale their Iraq operations remotely from Amman. For any international brand, we provide an alternative to setting up a local entity, hire local logistics staff, or navigating the banking system to repatriate revenue. We essentially act as their Iraqi operations partner. That dramatically lowers the risk and cost of entry.
What strategies do you use to improve last-mile delivery experience?
Generally, In Iraq, a delivery that arrives without prior notice will have a higher risk of failing – Customers want to know that it’s coming and when. And sometimes they may redirect to a different address or person. This is why we have processes in place to support the merchant in contacting and gathering accurate information such as customer location to improve their delivery rate.
We also focus on delivery speed; our target is nationwide delivery within 48 hours as standard. This sets a clear expectation for both merchants and customers. Beyond that, we work on driver accountability and tracking so merchants can see exactly where their shipments are. We believe every successful, on-time delivery is a trust-building event for both our client’s brand and their customer.
What does Sandoog offer for returns and reverse logistics?
Returns are included in our standard delivery service we don’t charge extra for processing them, which removes a major pain point for merchants who would otherwise face unpredictable reverse logistics costs. When a returned order comes back to our fulfilment centre, it’s checked, logged, and added back to available inventory if it’s in resaleable condition. Merchants can see this in real-time through their dashboard. We treat returns as part of the last-mile cycle, not an exception to it.
What growth do you foresee in the Middle Eastern fulfillment market, and what role will Sandoog play?
The trajectory is clear Iraq’s e-commerce market is in early but accelerating growth. Social commerce is already massive and is becoming scalable, brand-operated e-commerce. Additionally, Cross-Border selling is growing and allowing Sandoog to coordinate with other logistics service providers in the region more effectively.
The entry of regional aggregators and platforms is legitimising online shopping behaviour and raising customer expectations. This increases the need for fulfilment backends to grow substantially. Sandoog aims to be the operational backbone for that growth – to become the prime solution that both local and international brands choose when they want to reach both Iraqi and broader Middle Eastern consumers.
What is Sandoog’s long-term vision and which countries are you targeting?
Iraq is our home market and where we’ve built our expertise, but the same fulfilment gaps exist in neighbouring markets. We want to enable local brands to operate cross-border and international brands to enter and scale. We currently have an office in UAE, and that has a lot of potential both commercially and logistics-wise. We envision similar plans internationally to take our unique experience to clients who need it. The transformation we want to drive is simple: make it as easy to sell into Baghdad as it is to sell into Berlin. That’s still a long way off, but every brand we onboard, every successful delivery we make, and every data point we capture moves us closer to that.