When I saw that Kleiner Perkins made their first investment in Turkey, I was ecstatic (see here). For those who are not familiar with Trendyol, its business model mirrors that of Gilt Groupe or HauteLook. It’s a great example of how one can take a proven business model and apply it to a new market, if the appropriate market dynamics exist.
In addition to providing deals on goods to its users, Trendyol has a social element. Trendyol’s Facebook page has over 500K followers and it provides fashion advice to its community. This allows Trendyol to not only bring great deals to consumers but also keep them up to date with the latest fashion trends and create an entirely new shopping experience. As a result, Trendyol creates a stickier relationship with the consumers increasing the customer lifetime value.
I think that countries like Turkey have great potential in the future for new generation commerce companies to emerge. With the acceleration of adoption of new technologies in the relatively underpenetrated emerging world, we are going to see more investments being made to startups focused on addressing these markets.
