Startups saw nearly $20M in investment in Q1
by Daily Sabah
Apr 25, 2019 12:10 am


Investments in the Turkish entrepreneurial ecosystem during the first quarter of 2019 decreased by 38 percent in the quantity of transactions and 1.5 percent in investment amount compared to the same period of the previous year.

A total of $19.6 million was invested in 13 transactions in the first quarter of 2019, putting Turkey in the 16th place in Europe. SaaS (software as a service), modest fashion, artificial intelligence (AI), financial technology (fintech) and retail technologies took the lead in investments during this period.

According to the Startups.Watch, $2.5 million of the $19 million total investment in the first three months of 2019 went to seed ventures, $1.7 million to series A and $15 million to series B ventures. The ventures that received the most investments in this period were also engaged in the fields of modest fashion, SaaS, AI, fintech, and retail technologies, according to the Turkish daily, Habertürk.

The figures announced by Startups.Watch show a 38 percent decrease in the number of transactions and a 1.5 percent decrease in the investment amount, compared to the same period of the previous year.

The total amount of investments in the first three months of the year was close to the first quarter of 2018. Looking at previous periods, the $19.6 million investment in the January-March period of 2019 was 25 percent lower than the $26.3 million achieved in the first quarter of 2017.

Meanwhile, investments in the first three months of 2019 surpassed the $10.8 million figure caught in the first quarter of 2016 by about 81 percent. In the first three months of 2019, the U.K. ranked first in Europe with $1.8 billion, followed by Germany with $1.1 billion and France with $1.08 billion. In this period, Turkey ranked 16th in Europe, while in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region it came third, as in the first quarter of last year.

The report also included information on investment per capita. While Israel led the way in this category with $79, Turkey was ranked 31st among 39 countries with $0.25.