# Trendyol

Trendyol is an e-commerce platform based in Turkey, with its headquarters in Istanbul. The company was founded in 2010 by Demet Mutlu. Trendyol is a private company, operating in the fashion and retail sector in e-commerce area.
In 2018, the Chinese company Alibaba Group became the company's largest shareholder, holding 86.5% of shares. In August 2021, Trendyol entered into agreements to raise $1.5 billion from a number of investors, valuing the company at $16.5 billion. With the new funding, Trendyol became Turkey's first decacorn (a start-up with a valuation of over $10 billion). The round was co-led by General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Princeville Capital and sovereign wealth funds, ADQ (UAE) and Qatar Investment Authority. On 12 July 2023, Trendyol took over sponsorship of the Süper Lig and TFF First League football leagues from Spor Toto, by paying ₺700.000.000.

## History

Trendyol was co-founded by Demet Mutlu, Evren Üçok, and Begüm Tekin, in 2010. Üçok is the Chairperson, Erdem Inan is the CEO, and Çağlayan Çetin is the President.

### Funding and ownership

The Chinese company Alibaba Group became a partner of Trendyol in 2018 for $728 million. Alibaba Group invested another $350 million in Trendyol's capital increases in 2018 and 2020, increasing its partnership share to 86.5%.

## Group companies
### Trendyol Tech

The platform was approved as a research and development centre in 2019 by the Ministry of Industry and Technology. Trendyol Tech specialises in the following: native language processing; real-time data analysis; machine learning; deep learning; image processing; data visualisation; text simulation and big data.

### Dolap

Dolap was founded in 2016 as a second-hand product trading platform and acquired by Trendyol in 2018. 1.4 million individual sellers are currently active on Dolap.

### Trendyol Express

Founded as a delivery network in 2018.

## Investors

Founded with an initial capital of 300,000 USD, Trendyol received investment from Tiger Global and Kleiner Perkins in 2010–11 and EBRD in 2014. Alibaba Group became a shareholder of Trendyol in 2018. Following the investment made by Alibaba, Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, and EBRD were withdrawn. Alibaba became a shareholder of the company by acquiring the shares of 3 international shareholders in Trendyol. In August 2021, Trendyol had entered into agreements to raise $1.5 billion from a number of high-profile investors, valuing the company at $16.5 billion. 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. Thus, while Trendyol's valuation increased to 16.5 billion dollars, the company was upgraded to the 'decacorn' category, which is used for companies with a valuation exceeding 10 billion dollars.

## Allegations and penalties
### Algorithm manipulation

In 2021, the Competition Authority opened an investigation against Trendyol for highlighting certain sellers and products by manipulating their algorithms. In the investigation concluded in 2023 using evidence obtained from August 2017 to September 2021, the company was fined 61 million Turkish liras for systemic algorithm manipulation and unfair use of marketplace data.

### Bribery allegations

After the E-Commerce Law was published in the Official Gazette of Turkey Republic in 2022, Trendyol was accused of paying unregistered money to Cumhuriyet Newspaper in exchange for negative press against the law. This accusation was not accepted by the newspaper. Cumhuriyet Newspaper Foundation filed a criminal complaint against the officials of the period, alleging that they "received unregistered money" in exchange for manipulative news against the e-commerce law that came into force in January 2023.