Turkey’s Relentless Reinventors … from Trendyol’s rise as a super-app powerhouse, to the bold transformations of industrial giants … how a young, ambitious nation is turning innovation into a continuous reinvention

May 1, 2026

The story of modern Turkish innovation can be told through many lenses, but few are as powerful, or as emblematic, as the rise of Trendyol.

Trendyol, the Turkish superapp

It began, as many transformative stories do, with a bold return.

In 2010, Demet Mutlu left a promising path in the United States, including time at Harvard Business School, to build something in Turkey that did not yet exist: a world-class digital commerce platform. At the time, e-commerce penetration was low, logistics were fragmented, and consumer trust in online retail was still forming. Yet Mutlu saw something others did not—a young, urban, digitally curious population ready to leap forward.

Trendyol started as a fashion retailer. But to describe it that way today is to miss the point entirely.

What Mutlu and her team built, especially following the strategic investment from Alibaba Group, was not simply an online store, but an evolving ecosystem. Fashion quickly expanded into electronics, home goods, groceries, and beyond. Logistics became a core capability through the creation of proprietary delivery networks. Data became a strategic asset. Technology became the backbone. And increasingly, finance, AI, and services have become integral layers of the platform.

Today, Trendyol is best understood not as a retailer, but as a super-app in the making, a multi-dimensional platform connecting consumers, merchants, logistics providers, and financial services into a seamless digital experience. It is Turkey’s answer to Alibaba or Amazon, but shaped by its own context: faster-moving, more adaptive, and deeply attuned to the rhythms of emerging markets.

What fascinates me most about Trendyol is not just its scale, but its mindset. It never stood still. It continuously asked: what’s next? From marketplace to logistics, from domestic champion to international player, from commerce to ecosystem—each phase has been a deliberate act of reinvention.

And that, in many ways, is the defining characteristic of Turkish innovation.

An appetite for innovation

Turkey has something rare: a natural appetite for leading-edge ideas. This is not driven by theory, but by lived reality.

A young, connected population – digitally native, globally aware, and culturally dynamic – creates relentless demand for better, faster, more engaging experiences. At the same time, economic volatility and competitive intensity create urgency. Businesses cannot afford to wait. They must move, experiment, adapt.

The result is a distinctive innovation model:

Fast adoption of new ideas
Rapid scaling of proven concepts
Continuous pivoting and reinvention
A bias towards execution over theory

Innovation here is not a function. It is a mindset.

Learning from Turkish leaders

Over recent years, I have had the privilege of working with many of Turkey’s leading companies – from Abdi İbrahim in pharma to Aster in textiles, Eczacıbaşı in materials to Enerjisa in energy, Garanti in banking to Koç in engineering, Pınar in dairy and Ülker in snacking, Tofaş in mobility to Turkcell in telecoms, and many more.

These are not startups. They are established, often iconic businesses—deeply embedded in the fabric of the Turkish economy. Yet what has consistently impressed me is their willingness to innovate, to challenge themselves, and to evolve.

Each, in its own way, has undergone significant transformation:

Abdi İbrahim has expanded beyond traditional pharmaceuticals into biotechnology, digital health, and global partnerships—seeking to redefine its role in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape.
Aster is a symbol of Turkey’s thriving textile industry, shifting from an old commodity mindset, to now being an innovator of some of the most innovative, high performance fabrics, as used by Hugo Boss to Zegna.
Eczacıbaşı has combined industrial strength with design thinking, sustainability, and international expansion, particularly in building materials, consumer and healthcare products.
Enerjisa is shifting from traditional energy supply to smarter, more distributed, and customer-centric energy solutions. Mobility is just a start, energy powers life in so many more ways.
Garanti BBVA has been a pioneer in digital banking, embedding technology into every aspect of the customer experience and organisational model, and now seeking to do likewise with AI.
Koç Holding continues to evolve its vast industrial portfolio, integrating advanced engineering, digital capabilities, and perhaps most impressively perhaps, global partnerships across sectors.
Pınar and Ülker have modernised their food brands and portfolios, embracing health, wellness, and new consumer channels while maintaining scale, in particular Ulker, which iconically acquired Godiva.
Turkcell has moved far beyond telecoms, building digital services, platforms, and ecosystems that extend into finance, media, and beyond.

These companies have not stood still. They have innovated—sometimes incrementally, sometimes boldly. They have adopted new technologies, entered new markets, and reimagined their offerings.

And yet, despite all this progress, they now face a new, more profound challenge.

The next wave: reinvention, not just innovation

The world has changed. Innovation is no longer episodic, it is continuous. The pace of technological change, the convergence of industries, and the shifting expectations of customers mean that even the most innovative companies must now reinvent themselves again.

This is where the lessons from companies like Trendyol become particularly relevant.

Because Trendyol did not just innovate within its category—it redefined its category. It moved from product to platform, from transaction to ecosystem, from national player to international contender.

The question for Turkey’s established leaders is similar:

How do you move from sector to ecosystem?
From products to platforms?
From efficiency to experience?
From incremental improvement to transformational growth?

In my work with these companies, I see a growing recognition of this shift. The conversations are changing. The ambition is rising. There is a desire not just to compete—but to lead.

Getir and Dream Games

Alongside Trendyol, other Turkish innovators reinforce this narrative of bold thinking and rapid evolution.

Getir, for example, did not simply improve grocery delivery—it reinvented it. The idea of receiving groceries in minutes rather than days or hours fundamentally changed consumer expectations. It required a completely new operating model: dense networks, predictive analytics, and seamless digital interfaces.

Its rapid international expansion—and subsequent strategic refocusing—illustrates another hallmark of Turkish innovation: the willingness to experiment at scale, and to adapt quickly when conditions change.

Meanwhile, Dream Games represents a different but equally powerful trajectory. Rather than building physical infrastructure or complex ecosystems, it focuses on pure digital creativity—developing globally successful games that reach millions of users worldwide.

Here, innovation is about:

Product excellence, understanding design and technology, and adopting new possibilities first
User engagement, having a consumer-centric mindset, to anticipate emerging needs and aspirations
Global scalability from day one, no longer limiting mindsets to home markets first, and as limits

Together, these companies show the breadth of Turkey’s innovation capability—from logistics to platforms to digital entertainment.

A distinctive model of innovation

What emerges from all these examples, startups and corporates alike, is a distinctive Turkish model of innovation. It is:

Ambitious: aiming not just to compete locally, but to win globally
Adaptive: shaped by volatility and uncertainty
Pragmatic: focused on execution and results
Ecosystem-oriented: increasingly moving beyond traditional boundaries

But perhaps most importantly, it is human. It is driven by people with ambition, resilience, and a belief that the future can be different—and better.

The opportunity ahead

For Turkey’s leading companies, the opportunity now is immense.

They have:

Strong brands
Deep capabilities
Established market positions

What they need is the next layer of transformation:

Building platforms and ecosystems
Leveraging data and AI at scale
Expanding into adjacent markets
Creating new business models

In other words, they need to combine their industrial strength with the entrepreneurial energy of companies like Trendyol, Getir, and Dream Games.

From appetite to leadership

As I reflect on my work across Turkey, one thing stands out above all: the appetite is already there.

The willingness to innovate.
The openness to new ideas.
The ambition to grow and lead.

The challenge—and the opportunity—is to channel that appetite into continuous reinvention.

Because in today’s world, success is not defined by what you have built, but by how quickly you can build what comes next.

Reinventing the future

Trendyol’s journey—from a fashion startup to a super-app ecosystem—is not just a company story. It is a metaphor for Turkey itself: dynamic, ambitious, and constantly evolving.

The same spirit can be seen in Getir’s category creation, in Dream Games’ global creativity, and in the ongoing transformation of the country’s leading industrial and service companies.

From Abdi İbrahim in pharma to Aster in textiles, Eczacıbaşı in materials to Enerjisa in energy, Garanti in banking to Koç in engineering, Pınar in dairy and Ülker in snacking, Tofaş in mobility to Turkcell in telecoms, and many more—I have seen firsthand the depth of capability and the hunger to innovate.

Now, the next chapter begins.

Not just innovation. But reinvention. Again, and again.

And if the trajectory so far is any indication, Turkey’s innovators will not just adapt to the future, they will help to create it.

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