EBRD invests in the rapidly growing Turkish tech company, obilet.com
12.12.2019 14:02:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested in obilet.com, the online sales platform for users to purchase bus and airline tickets. EBRD, which offers financing for thousands of projects to support local growth in European countries, has invested $11 billion in Turkish businesses and projects to date. Earlybird Venture Capital, an investor in obilet.com, announced that it will also participate in the next round of funding.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191212005302/en/
EBRD added obilet.com, Turkey's fastest-growing online ticket sales platform, to its investment portfolio. Yigit Gurocak, (obilet.com CEO and Co-founder) and Ali Yılmaz, (obilet.com Co-founder) (Photo: Business Wire)
Yigit Gurocak, CEO - obilet.com, said that the company aimed to provide services to different segments of the transportation industry by expanding its teams in 2020 with the support of new investments.
The company, currently at 400 million visitors, aims to sell 18 million tickets in 2020!
obilet.com, which offers comparison and purchasing options for bus and airline tickets of more than 150 bus operators and 1000 airlines, was founded in 2012 by two university students and entrepreneurs, Ali Yilmaz and Yigit Gurocak. The company’s CEO Yigit Gurocak summarized the last seven years, “Starting from its inception to the present day, obilet.com recorded outstanding growth to reach 400 million visitors, now ranks the top-visited travel site in Turkey.”
The initiative of two entrepreneurs’ dreams, obilet.com currently operates with 160 employees and is expected to maintain its growth in the Turkish travel industry, which reportedly has a size of approximately $15 billion. Yigit Gurocak said that the company aims to sell 18 million tickets in 2020 on obilet.com and the mobile app in Turkey, where 300 million tickets are sold in total.
The Turkish startup to receive highest international funding
According to Startups Watch data, obilet.com stood out as the Turkish startup to receive the highest amount of international funding in 2018 Q2 and when the investment was acquired in November 2019, it was the largest amount of investment of 2019 up until that point. With the participation of EBRD in the latest round, obilet.com has received its fourth investment round in the last five years leading the Turkish technology and travel sectors in this aspect. With this investment, obilet.com raised $10 million within one year.
Named “Europe's Best Travel App” by Mastercard in 2015, obilet.com ranked eighth among the fastest-growing companies listed in the 2017 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 program with a growth rate of 1041%. Most recently, obilet.com was also listed among Turkey’s 100 Fastest Growing Businesses according to the results of a 2019 survey conducted by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) and the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV).
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191212005302/en/
Contact information
Contact Details:
Sena Ozkurt
sena@obilet.com
+905348960414
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Bending Spoons S.p.A. announces pricing of initial public offering1.7.2026 02:56:00 EEST | Press release
Bending Spoons S.p.A. (“Bending Spoons”), a leading technology company, today announces the pricing of its initial public offering (“IPO”) at $29.00 per share. A total of 57,971,015 ordinary shares are being offered, of which 34,398,640 shares are being offered by Bending Spoons and 23,572,375 shares are being offered by certain selling shareholders (the “Selling Shareholders”). Bending Spoons will not receive any proceeds from any sale of shares by the Selling Shareholders. The shares are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “BSP” on July 1, 2026. The offering is expected to close on July 2, 2026, subject to customary closing conditions. In addition, Bending Spoons and the Selling Shareholders granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 5,244,026 ordinary shares from Bending Spoons and up to an additional 3,451,626 ordinary shares from the Selling Shareholders at the initial public offering price, less underwriting
FDA Issues Modified Risk Tobacco Product Orders for 20 ZYN Nicotine Pouch Products30.6.2026 19:19:00 EEST | Press release
Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) (NYSE: PM) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) orders for 20 variants of ZYN nicotine pouch products. These are the first MRTP orders granted for nicotine pouches, allowing PMI U.S. to market the following claim for the authorized ZYN products: “Using ZYN instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.” “FDA’s decision is an important moment for the more than 45 million legal-age nicotine consumers in America,” saidStacey Kennedy, PMI U.S. CEO. “Today’s news ensures these adultshave access to accurate, science-based information, including FDA-authorized evidence that switching from cigarettes to ZYN reduces the risk of smoking-related diseases like heart disease and lung cancer,” she added. “More broadly, it reinforces the agency’s science-based approach to evaluating products across the co
Caidya Announces Strategic Combination with Simbec-Orion Bridging Early Scientific Insight and Global Clinical Execution30.6.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Caidya today announced a strategic combination with Simbec-Orion designed to close the divide between early scientific insight and global clinical execution. The combination of Caidya and Simbec-Orion creates a differentiated specialty clinical CRO platform that enables programs to scale, maintaining focus, speed, and accountability. The strategic combination brings together complementary strengths to create a more complete development partner for innovative biopharma companies. With established operations across Europe, the Americas, APAC, and China, the combined organization provides meaningful expertise and execution capabilities in the regions that matter most. Simbec-Orion brings early-phase clinical pharmacology capabilities alongside deep therapeutic expertise for later stage complex oncology and rare disease trials, helping sponsors shape critical decisions early in the development lifecycle. Together, the organizations strengthen their ability to support complex, cross-border
Archer® Proves Purpose-Built AI Beats General-Purpose LLMs on Regulatory Change Management: 95% Verified Accuracy, 80x Faster, 92% Lower Cost30.6.2026 17:13:00 EEST | Press release
For enterprises deploying AI in compliance, a wrong date is a missed deadline. The more dangerous failure is a wrong answer the model returns with high confidence, one that flows silently into a compliance calendar and is only discovered after the window has passed. Archer® today released results showing purpose-built AI beats a general-purpose large language model (LLM) on regulatory work, and it’s not close. This head-to-head test compared Archer’s purpose-built, vertical-specific AI and proprietary data sets against a leading general-purpose LLM, on a core compliance task: determining the publication, effective and comment-close dates of regulatory documents across six jurisdictions. General-purpose models are a genuine breakthrough, and this is no referendum on their quality. The question Archer set out to answer is narrower and more practical: what it takes to make a specific, high-stakes determination reliable, fast and affordable at scale. A vertical, domain-focused process, gro
Altasciences Supports Key Development Milestone for Steel Therapeutics’ Lead Therapeutic Candidate, Fizurex™30.6.2026 17:08:00 EEST | Press release
Altasciences, a leading drug development organization, today announced a significant milestone in the development of Steel Therapeutics, Inc.’s pivotal toxicology study for its lead product candidate, Fizurex™, for the treatment of anal fissures. The successful completion of the study plays a significant role in the advancement of Fizurex™ toward first-in-human trials. The GLP-compliant study demonstrated a favorable safety profile, which has advanced Steel Therapeutics' plans to submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for Fizurex™ to the FDA in Q3 2026. Fizurex™, a patent-pending, single-use topical wipe, was designed to provide a standardized, accessible treatment option for a painful and often undertreated medical condition. The product builds on years of use through compounding pharmacy prescriptions and is now advancing toward clinical development and regulatory review. "We are proud to have supported Steel Therapeutics with the generation of the high-quality safety d
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom