TECHNOLOGY GIANTS WITH 5-10 YEARS OF HISTORY ARE TAKING THE PLACE OF CENTURY-OLD COMPANIES
Turkey’s giant industrial establishments, financial institutions and well-established holdings have spent decades and invested billions of liras to reach billion-dollar company values. They employed tens of thousands of people. Holding managements passed to the second and third generations. People have spent a lifetime in these companies and retired. New ones came in their place.
Digital transformation, which started with the internet age and gained a whole new dimension with smart phones and applications; It radically changes the economy, social life and the way we do business.
Nothing is as we know it anymore! With the pandemic process, even a brand new concept called %22New Normal%22 has entered our lives.
The vast majority of the world’s 100 most valuable brands are technology companies that do not even have a 20-year history.
Market values of brands such as Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google are over 1 trillion dollars.
EVERY YEAR, OVER 100 NEW TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES WITHOUT 10 YEARS OF HISTORY REACH BILLION DOLLARS (UNICORN) VALUES EVERY YEAR.
About 27% of companies with unicorns don’t even have a 5-year history. This period is shrinking day by day. There are so many billion dollar companies that don’t have 100 employees.
Most unicorns come from the USA. The European Union allocates billions of euros each year to support technology investments and Startups. Countries such as the UK, Netherlands, France and Germany are establishing privileged technology zones to attract bright future technology startups. Over $5 billion a year is invested in Startups in Israel.
UNICORN JOURNEY OF STARTUPS IN TURKEY
Established in 1998, Turkey’s most rooted and most valuable e-commerce giant Hepsiburada is among those who increased their turnover the most during the pandemic period. In 2015, the group sold 25% of its shares to the Abraaj fund at a valuation of $400 million, with a probable value of over a billion dollars.
sahibinden.com, Turkey’s largest electronic commerce and advertisement platform, was launched in 2000. More than 600 people work in this innovative company, which has more than 45 million users per month. The value of the group, which has chosen to grow on its own and has not received any investment, is at the level of several billion dollars when compared to its peers in the world.
One of the sales that excited Turkey in 2011 was the sale of Gittigidiyor, the e-commerce site established in 2001, to global e-commerce giant eBay for $217.5 million. Everyone’s attention was focused on Gittigiyor and his team. In the same year, MIH Allegro BV bought 71.2% of Markafoni, Turkey’s first personalized e-commerce site and application, for 200 million dollars, and soon became its owner.
Founded in 2001, Yemeksepeti.com has raised the bar even higher. It was sold to German Delivery Hero for a pretty good $589M in 2015. The sale of Yemeksepeti at these values excited the young people in particular. A large number of technology startups began to be established and implemented.
Trendyol became the first billion-dollar company sale officially in Turkey in 2018. China’s largest e-commerce giant Alibaba paid 728 million dollars to 75% of Trendyol.
Bringing hundreds of products to homes within 5-10 minutes, with its distribution network established in city centers and launched in 2015, Getir received a $25 million Series A investment from Michael Moritz, one of the leading US investors in Silicon Valley. Getir raised a total of $38 million in this investment round.
THE SALE OF 100-PERSON TURKISH MOBILE GAMES COMPANY PEAK GAMES TO US GAME GIANT ZYNGA FOR $1.8 BILLION TURNED ATTENTION IN THE WORLD TO TURKEY
As of 2018, the mobile game market has surpassed the console-video game market in the world. Now in 2020, 57% of the global game market consists of mobile game revenues, and this increase seems to continue. By the end of 2020, it is predicted that the size of the mobile game market will grow more than expected due to the Pandemic and may reach 180 billion dollars.
Founded by Sidar Şahin in 2010, Peak Games was purchased by the US game giant Zynga for a record $1.8 billion in the past few days. Everyone’s eyes in the world and in Turkey focused on this sale.
The real winner of the sale was Earlybird, the European venture capital firm that made its first investment in PeakGames in 2011, rising to 43.32% in subsequent rounds. Earlybird, which invested $5 million in a 23.81% stake in 2011, increased its share to 43.32% over time. He earned over $700 million from this sale.
The culture of domestic investment in startups has not yet been fully formed in Turkey. In 2019, angel investors and networks invested a total of $101 million in 41 startups. This remains very symbolic in an economy of 800 billion dollars like Turkey, it has to be folded quickly.
According to Startups.watch data, venture capital funds and angel investors invested $294 billion in startups around the world in 2019.
Startups in the US received $124 billion in investment, while startups in China received $53 billion, and startups in India $16 billion.
Startups and investments are getting more and more attention. Investments in Turkish ‘startups’ will continue to come from all over the world. Peak Games investment will trigger the startup world. With 2020, investments in startups started to rise again. It should be expected that 2020 may be the year of big investments, and a 5-10 band unicorn may emerge from Turkey in 2021 and 2022.
Location-based marketplace applications, embedded smart technologies, artificial intelligence supported health solutions, smart logistics management technologies will come to the fore.
When the Global Crunchbase indices, in which companies, investors and mutual funds are ranked by many algorithms and criteria, the following companies in Turkey draw attention:
Peak Games, which was sold to Zynga of the USA for 1.8 billion dollars, is at the top of the Crunchbase Turkey ranking, while Peak Games is in the second place, with the technologies it has developed among its tens of European competitors, it has managed to rank among the top 3 logistics technologies in Europe, and established a logistics operations management platform powered by increased intelligence. TIRPORT is located. TIRPORT is followed by Getir and Trendyol.
Many technology gurus consider the logistics industry as the industry where digital transformation will be experienced most intensely in the next five years. The logistics industry, which has created 14 billion dollars of companies globally in the last 5 years, is rapidly digitalizing.
In the market where logistics technologies such as Coyote, Convoy, Project44, NextTrucking, Flexport, Manhang, Delhivery, Rivigo, Blackbuck have turned into billion-dollar companies, CargoX from Brazil, Sennder and Forto from Germany, Tirport from Turkey, OnTruck from Spain, USA from Fourkites.
With startups, ideas turn into technology and technologies turn into values that facilitate the new lifestyle. These values can quickly turn into billion-dollar assets with their innovations, the audiences they reach, the habits they gain and the revenues they generate.