The Alibaba Group has bought a stake of Trendyol, the foremost e-commerce company in Turkey which boasts of 16 million customers and more than 2,000 registered merchants, selling more than 70 million products annually.
Trednyol is also the fastest growing mobile shopping platform in the Middle East and North Africa according to its CrunchBase profile. It is also enjoying 90 million website visitors on a monthly basis.
Alibaba has kept mum about the actual value of its stake but Axios reported that the company invested $750 million to become one of Trendyol's major shareholders. People familiar with the deal told Xinhua that Alibaba decided to acquire shares of the Turkish fashion online retailer to widen its business clout and take advantage of fast emerging markets like Turkey.
The deal between Alibaba and Trendyol was first reported in July. Nikkei Asian Review mentioned at the time that Alibaba did not disclose the specifics of the investment. Market insiders, however, deduced that the company will be spending approximately $1 billion to own about 75 percent interest in Trendyol.
If that figure is accurate, Alibaba's investment has become the biggest foreign venture ever made that involved a Turkish startup. The venture has exceeded the $589 million worth of investment on a Turkish startup from a German entity in 2015.
Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group, who oversaw the deal, said Turkey has proven to be an important market and has stood out among the regions and international market that they assessed with regard to the development and abundance of digital economies.
Indeed, the country's e-commerce market rose to $8.6 billion in 2017, a 37 percent increase from its value in 2016. A significant chunk or 31 percent of the increase was delivered by online retail companies such as Trendyol according to Nikkei Asian Review, citing data from the Turkish Informatics Industry Association.
Evans described Trendyol in particular as a market leader that is effectively managed by a team that has also built its strong online platform and impressive loyal merchants and customers.
As part of the deal, Alibaba will support Trendyol in its technological requirements that may include but not limited to putting up more websites and establishing a stable logistics network.
Trendyol is founded in 2010 and has since then employed 2000 people. Alibaba joins its roster of shareholders which include Tiger Global and Kleiner Perkins which are both early investors of Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn among others.
The deal between Alibaba and Trendyol happened a month after Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and China's Vice President Wang Qishan agreed in June to further strengthen and expand bilateral relations between the two nations.
