eBay Acquires Turkish Marketplace GittiGidiyor

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

eBay is announcing the acquisition of Turkish auction marketplace GittiGidiyor. The deal follows eBay’s acquisition of a minority stake in the company in 2007. With the new investment, eBay now owns approximately 93% of the outstanding shares of GittiGidiyor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Launched in, 2001, GittiGidiyor has more than 6.4 million registered users. GittoGidyor is essentially an eBay clone, but localized for the Turkish market. The business also includes a mandatory escrow service for payments between buyer and seller. GittiGidyor’s largest categories are Fashion and Consumer Electronics. In addition to eBay, the company previously raised capital from iLab Ventures, founded and led by Mustafa E. Say.

eBay also believes that traffic and usage of the marketplace will increase, as Turkey is the world’s 12th largest market for Internet usage, and has a penetration rate of 45%.

Serkan Borançılı, co-founder and chairman of GittiGidiyor’s board of directors, issued this statement: Becoming an eBay company is a source of great pride for GittiGidiyor…By being fully part of eBay, we can accelerate our development, benefit from world class best practices and consolidate our leadership position in one of Europe’s fastest growing ecommerce markets.

Company: eBay
Website: ebay.com
Launch Date: September 1, 1995
IPO: February 10, 1998, NASDAQ:EBAY

Founded in 1995 in San Jose, CA, eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers globally in the world’s largest online marketplace, utilizing PayPal to ensure secure transactions. The company also operates specialized marketplaces such as StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, and eBay Classifieds sites, which together have a presence in more than 1,000 cities around the world. eBay items can be sold either via a silent auction, in which users input the maximum price they are willing to...

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