NEWSROOM

The Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem left its mark on 2022 with its global achievements. Turkey-based early-stage technology investment fund, whose fund size reached $18.1 million, completed 2022 with 3 exits.

TURKEY - Although the global recession concerns, which increased towards the end of last year, were reflected in venture capital and venture investments around the world, the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem also spent 2022 with new successes. According to Crunchbase data, while there was a 63% decline in investments made in North America-based startups in the last quarter of 2022, Turkish startups pushed the record they broke in 2021 even higher last year. Turkey-based early-stage technology investment fund StartersHub also completed 2022 with 7 investments, 3 exits completed and a total fund size of 18.1 million dollars.

Arda Aşkın, Managing Director of Startershub, shared his evaluations on the subject and said, “We have completed 2022, where we focused especially on B2B companies, with 3 exits and 7 investments, which are very important for the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem. We aim to invest in 10 startups every year in 2023 and the following years."

Fund size reached $18.1 million

The total size of the fund, which is positioned as a starting point for startups, reached $18.1 million in 2022. Paymes, PulpoAR and Tridi were among the startups in the fund's portfolio and sold abroad in 2022. Arda Aşkın stated that all of Paymes was acquired by PayTaps in order to create a social commerce platform that supports millions of freelancers, artisans, consultants, individual business owners, personal trainers and micro-sellers in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region with instant payment solutions. The company continues its activities in markets such as Uzbekistan, Jordan and Georgia under PayTaps. In addition, in June 2022, PulpoAR's B2B-focused augmented reality solutions were acquired by the Glimpse Group. In addition, Tridi, which we brought to our portfolio just 1 year ago, was bought by Xometry, and it became the investment that we completed as StartersHub as soon as possible. Apart from exit and mergers, 8 startups in our portfolio increased their valuations by receiving a total investment of 4.2 million dollars from domestic and foreign sources in 2022.”

$ 5.1 million invested

Noting that they examined more than 2,000 domestic and foreign startups last year and that they took nearly 500 startups into the first stage evaluation, Arda Aşkın said, "As Startershub, we focus on startups that find answers to real problems with scalable solutions, create real impacts and have the potential to change the industries radically. We have invested more than $5.1 million in startups whose business model and vision we believe in. We hold regular strategy meetings with all startups in our portfolio and share our investor network with entrepreneurs. In 2022, we increased the number of active startups in our portfolio to 37 and completed 5 new and 2 follow-on investments. These companies include Delivers.ai, which provides contactless food and grocery delivery with autonomous robots; the award-winning digital marketing system Earnado; Kassa, a wallet application where all income and expenses can be tracked; Quin, which focuses on predicting user behavior; and DatAnchor, which works in data security." used.

Focusing on finance, education, cybersecurity and logistics technologies

Emphasizing that they act with the goal of investing in 10 startups every year, StartersHub Managing Director Arda Aşkın concluded his evaluations with the following statements: started to take global steps by moving to countries. In addition, companies such as Lumnion and Kolaybi opened up to foreign markets by starting their operations in Germany. We are closely involved in B2B sectors such as artificial intelligence, HR technologies, financial technologies, educational technologies, productivity, cybersecurity, developer tools and logistics technologies. We will continue to focus on early-stage technology investments in 2023 and the following years.”