Turkey’s Trendyol raises $1.5 bln, valuing it at $16.5 billion

ISTANBUL

Turkish e-commerce firm Trendyol, backed by Chinese internet giant Alibaba, said yesterday it had entered into agreements to raise $1.5 billion from a number of high-profile investors, valuing the company at $16.5 billion.

That makes the company Turkey’s first “decacorn,” a word used for those companies over $10 billion, according to a written statement.

Trendyol, one of Turkey’s best known e-commerce platforms, has drawn backing from foreign investors and holds a leading position in Turkey’s fragmented e-commerce market.

The round was co-led by General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, as well as Princeville Capital and sovereign wealth funds, ADQ (UAE) and the Qatar Investment Authority, the company said in a statement.

“The funding proceeds will support Trendyol’s growth both within Turkey and internationally,” company’s founder Demet Suzan Mutlu said.

Founded in 2010, Trendyol serves more than 30 million shoppers, delivering more than 1 million packages per day from groceries to clothes.

“While hundreds of thousands of people work for sales operations on our platform, we also provide more jobs in sectors such as delivery, packaging and customer services. Thus, we have made a contribution of 1.1 million employment positions to our economy. We are aiming to increase this figure to 2.4 million people in 2023,” she added.

In April, Alibaba, which bought a majority stake in Trendyol in 2018, increased its stake to 86.5 percent in a capital increase, according to the country’s trade registry.

According to a study conducted by the independent research organization PAL, 98,000 businesses and 1.1 million individuals sold 374 million products on Trendyol in 2020.