Turkish startups raise USD 20 million in 2020 Q1

SaaS is the star vertical for the investments and no Covid-19 effect in sight for the future investments yet  

Turkish startups raised USD 19.8 million funding in Q1 2020, according to Startups.watch. As the startups intelligence platform, Startups .watch announced that the Covid-19 effect is not visible with the investments yet.

I bulleted the outstanding aspects of the report:

-Here are the top 10 investments that constituted 91% of the full investments: App Samurai, Apsiyon, Biolive, Jib Games, Mutlubiev, Otsimo, PriSync, Temizlikyolda, Thundra and Vispera. Those startups raised USD 18.4 million in total.

-Total number of the investment rounds was 27.

-Here are the most-funded verticals: SaaS (USD 10.4 mio), fintech (USD 5.2 mio), proptech (USD 5.1 mio), AI (USD 4.7 mio) and deeptech (USD 4.2 mio).     

-Startups.watch is also tracking the Turkish diaspora startups, meaning startups that have been founded by the Turks abroad. Startups. watch said nine Turkish diaspora startups raised USD 80 million.

-In FY 2019, the Turkish startups managed to raise USD 103 million.

-Corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) invested USD 4 million with 12 rounds.

-Amazon’s acquisition of Datarow, a data visualization startup, had a positive effect on the Turkish startup scene.

As the data show, this quarter’s star vertical is SaaS. Generally speaking Turkish startups in fintech and gaming verticals are attractive for funding, especially from the foreigner investors. This quarter showed that deeptech appeared as a unique vertical, gaining USD 4.2 million. A reminder: Deeptech managed to receive only USD 3.3 million in FY 2019. N the other hand, Startups.watch added that their data don’t include non-equity, secondary and post-IPO transactions, grants and convertible debts.

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