Crowdfunding platform Fongogo announced that it acquired StartupMarket, one of the largest meeting points of entrepreneurs and investors in Turkiye.
CMB-licensed Fongogo, which is Turkiye’s leading reward-based crowdfunding company and has recently stepped into share-based crowdfunding, announced that it acquired StartupMarket following the pre-Series A bridge investment round led by Sharks & Partners in September 2023.
With this acquisition, Fongogo gained a very important competitive advantage in crowdfunding by providing access to the wide network of entrepreneurs and investors on the StartupMarket platform.
“We will be the largest startup investment platform in the region.”
Fongogo, which has reached nearly 3,000 startups and thousands of investors on StartupMarket with the acquisition, has become one of Turkiye’s largest startup investment platforms.
Stating that they aim to become the largest crowdfunding platform in the region, Fongogo Chairman Ali Cebi said the following about the acquisition:
“We are very excited to merge with StartupMarket. While we provide a meeting and interaction platform for startups, investors and solution partners through the Startupmarket channel, we will facilitate access to resources for startups going on an investment tour with Fongogo. We aim to contribute to the growth of the ecosystem under our leadership by revealing the synergies between the two platforms. With this merger, ‘To accelerate and facilitate access to resources for enterprises and businesses with the power of the masses; “I can see that we are closer to our mission, which is to create added value by directing resources to correct and sustainable business ideas. May this acquisition be beneficial to the Turkish technology entrepreneurship sector.”
StartupMarket Founder and CEO Serkan Bagce said the following about the acquisition:
“This merger is an important step in our goal of building a strong ecosystem that supports creative projects and entrepreneurship in Turkiye. Fongogo’s leadership in crowdfunding fits perfectly with our commitment to driving innovation and discovering promising startups. Fongogo will continue its recent breakthrough without slowing down. I can say that the strengthening of the team with the important names of the industry and many other important steps will be announced one after the other in the near future.”
After the merger, Serkan Bagce became the executive general manager of Fongogo, while Ali Cebi took on the role of manager responsible for venture capital investment funds in addition to his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Fongogo co-founder Ali Tirkes will continue to serve as the manager responsible for ecosystem collaborations.
After the acquisition, the shares of StartupMarket investor partners were converted into Fongogo shares, creating an investor pool with significant experience in the fields of corporate, entrepreneurship, finance and capital markets.
“We plan to provide ₺500 million funding”
Serkan Bagce stated that approximately ₺600 Million of crowdfunding has been realized in Turkiye to date;
“We see that only 25,000 different investors have invested in crowdfunding to date. Considering the millions of investors in the stock market and coin market, I expect the startup investment market through crowdfunding to grow at least 25 times. As Fongogo, we have made plans to reach a total funding of ₺500 Million on our platform in 2025.”
Founded in 2013, Fongogo Crowdfunding Platform Inc. is a platform that helps bring together the capital needed to implement all kinds of projects with the support of the masses. Fongogo provides the mechanism where project owners can create campaign pages, use payment systems and run their campaigns. Fongogo, which started with reward and donation-based crowdfunding activities, which are two of the four verticals of crowdfunding, is on its way to becoming a holistic alternative financing platform by adding equity-based and debt-based funding verticals to its product range.
Source: Egirisim / Prepared by Irem Yildiz