Based in Turkey, e-commerce website Modanisa announced a $5.5 million investment by Saudi Arabian STC Ventures. The website specializes in conservative Muslim clothes.
The conservative Muslim fashion market is estimated to be a worth $200 billion, only a fraction of which is online .
E-commerce is a growing trend in the region, seen by many as a huge investment opportunity, particularly in Turkey. Earlier this month, Dubai's Abraaj Group invested in one of Turkey’s oldest and largest online retailers, Hepsiburada .
It is the first investment deal since the announcement of the Borsa Instanbul Private Market in November 2014, a joint initiative by the Istanbul Stock Exchange and Endeavor Turkey.
Rated as a start-up of the week by Wired in January, Modanisa aims to make modern conservative clothes easier to buy, featuring the latest in fashion. The biggest consumer markets for Islamic fashion are Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, France and the United Arab Emirates.
Kerim Ture and Lale Tuzun, the company's co-founders, told Wired that "Muslim women's fashion needs were under-addressed for years. The Western fashion industry used to think that Muslim women's fashion was all about black burkas. Besides that, local producers were repeating what they had been doing for many years."
Their strategy must be working. According to the 2015 Reuters and Dinar Standard's Global Islamic Economy Report, the site is the most popular conservative fashion site in the world.