Trendyol is Turkey’s largest e-commerce company, serving more than 30 million shoppers and delivering more than 1 million packages per day.

Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) backed Trendyol announced Monday it had received commitments worth $1.5 billion in a funding round 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. (Reuters)

In March, Alibaba had invested $350 million in the firm to support its expansion both at home and internationally. After that investment, Alibaba owned an 87% stake.

The new funding propelled Trendyol to decacorn status, the first in Turkey. A decacorn is an unlisted startup valued at more than $10 billion.

Super-app

Trendyol has integrated its marketplace platform with its own last-mile delivery solution (Trendyol Express), with instant grocery and food delivery through its own courier network (Trendyol Go), its digital wallet (Trendyol Pay), consumer-to-consumer channel (Dolap) and many other services, thereby creating a super-app.

The pandemic triggered a surge in e-commerce, and unsurprisingly, the ecommerce startup more than doubled active users last year to 19.3 million and increased average orders per customer by around 50% to 26.8 in 2020 over the previous year.

According to Bloomberg, its GMV rose 20X over the last three years, and this year could reach $10 billion. Euromonitor data for 2020 shows its share of Turkey’s e-commerce market is over 33%.

“Trendyol will continue its investment in nationwide infrastructure, technology, and logistics, accelerate the digitalization of Turkish SMEs,” said Demet Suzan Mutlu, Trendyol’s founder.

Chairman Evren Ucok said there was tremendous growth potential in Turkey given its young and growing population and impressive human capital. He added that the company intended to create new export channels for Turkish merchants and manufacturers.

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