Turkish grocery app Getir grabs German rival Gorillas

ISTANBUL

Türkiye's grocery app Getir said on Dec . 10 it has acquired its German rival Gorillas as the online food delivery market consolidates following a boom during the coronavirus pandemic.

A Getir company spokesman told AFP that the acquisition valued the German company at $1.2 billion but disclosed no other details of deal.

"Markets go up and down, but consumers love our service and convenience is here to stay," Getir founder Nazim Salur said in a company statement."Getir will continue to lead the industry it invented seven years ago."Getir's valuation has surged since its creation by a group of Istanbul entrepreneurs and the US venture capital firm Sequoia in 2015.

The company reached a valuation of nearly $12 billion before entering a slump this year that forced it to fire 14 percent of its global workforce.Gorillas has struggled to turn a profit since its creation in May 2020.The Financial Times said the deal valued the two merged companies at around $10 billion.

Getir's growth has turned into one of the main players of the once-booming food and grocery delivery market.Its yellow-and-purple delivery scooters can now be spotted across European capitals as well as US cities such as Chicago and New York.It has sponsorship deals with the New York Mets of Major League Baseball and the Premier League's Tottenham Hotspur.

Getir's growing global recognition has turned into a rare success story in Türkiye -- an emerging market experiencing an economic meltdown that has seen the official annual inflation rate reach 85 percent.Gorillas sold itself to consumers with a promise to deliver groceries within 10 minutes of any order.It expanded from its base in Berlin across Europe and also soon reached the United States.

But its rapid expansion never translated into consistent sales and the company began closing many of its European locations this year.The Financial Times reported that Gorillas was losing $1.5 for every dollar it generated in revenue.