February 2022 Turkish Startup Industry Recap

StartupMarket, one of the Turkey's most important startup ecosystem pioneers which has been operating since 2018, has published a report about the startup ecosystem in Turkey. According to the report published every month by StartupMarket, in February 2022, a total of 151 million USD worth of investment was made in 15 different startups in Turkey. Among them, Insider which received an investment of 121 million USD is a focus point. The company also became Turkey's 6th Unicorn.

Excluding the Insider, a total of approximately 30 million USD was invested in 14 Startups in Turkey in February 2022. Among them, Midas, which received an investment of 11 million USD, draws attention. Midas is followed by the cyber security initiative founded by Emre Tınaztepe in 2018, which enables companies to respond faster and more effectively to cyber threats, and Binalyze, which received an investment of 10 million USD. After that there is ClickMeLive, a video shopping application where you can shop immediately while watching product promotions in live broadcasts. It has an an investment of 4.4 million USD from Yıldız Ventures.

Also read: Insider: Turkey’s First Software Unicorn

The Success of Insider

Insider which is an AI-supported multi-channel growth management platform serving in 28 countries on 5 continents, has reached $121 million investment in Series D round that was joined by QIA, Sequoia Capital, Riverwood Capital, Esas Private Equity, Wamda Capital, Endeavor Catalyst and 212. The startup, whose valuation exceeds 1 billion dollars, became Turkey's first unicorn software company.

When we look at the sectoral distribution of investments made in February, we see that startups operating in the financial technologies sector and serving as a marketplace stand out. In the period when information was stored in digital resources, both the convenience of digital transformation and the elimination of security problems caused the digitalization of money in the field of finance. Therefore, this accumulation effects the startup world.

Since the game industry is a large ecosystem with many creative parts, entrepreneurs can turn their talents and creativity into innovative business models with a contemporary synthesis. This causes game entrepreneurship to come to the fore.

The mobile game industry in Turkey has crossed its borders and has come to a strong position in the international market. This creates a ripple effect, causing new gaming startups to be established and investors preferring the gaming industry.