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.