Istanbul-based Revo Capital Management, founded in 2013, has invested Turkish lira (TRY) 14mn (€2mn) in 3D augmented reality startup CY Vision, according to local media reports.

CY Vision is part of Turkey’s “native and national” programme to deliver the country’s first domestically designed and produced car. It is taking responsibility for the project’s hologram technology mission, Cenk Bayrakdar of Revo told business daily Dunya.

Turkey’s “native and national” car project is one of the most crackbrained ways of allocating Turkish public resources ever devised but it has provided income guarantees—given, please note, prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak—for companies without certain ethical constraints.

A better project would be reinventing the wheel in Anatolia before embarking on the road to a “native and national” automobile, but at the end of the day, whatever the project’s contours, there are serious question marks at the moment as to whether President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have the economic wherewithal to allocate public funds to meet the fantasies of his cultured middle-class.

For added comedy value, let’s not forget how a prototype was imported from Italy last December in order to make possible a sensational promotional ceremony to announce the “fully electric” automotive ambitions.

The talk was that the “native and national” car was to hit the highway prior to the next presidential election, but given the corona conundrum and Turkey’s economic mayhem, there’s no guessing when that will be. Don’t rule out next week, or a generation from now should the country go “full regime”.

No engine, Italian body

“Inshallah, we’ll solve the engine issue too in a few years,” Erdogan said at the ceremony.
 

We just couldn't run that picture big enough.

So, although the “native and national” car lacks an engine, it has an Italian body, the will, all being well, of Allah behind it, and, not long from now, a “holographic assistant” feature, if media reports that imply CY Vision is set to develop it or import it, prove free of error.

Vestel (owned by a prominent devotee of Erdogan, Ahmet Nazif Zorlu), Koc Holding’s Inventram and US-based Intel Capital also have stakes in CY. Everybody has joined the gang. An Erdogan businessman, an early Turkish Republic bourgeois, a multinational and the harbingers of hefty public finance. The only thing missing—can we stress this enough?—is an engine as Intel could provide the hologram.

In March, Revo Capital Fund II achieved a first closing with over €41mn in capital commitments, and CY was its first investment. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), EIF, Enerjisa, Finberg, QNB Finansbank and Yildiz Ventures are among the participants in Revo’s second fund.

22 ventures

Revo has investments in 22 ventures, including e-invoicer Foriba (sold to US-based Sovos), Skyatlas (a cloud infrastructure provider sold to Istanbul-based Kartaca) and delivery service application Getir. Revo Capital Fund I took in $66mn.

Ah, good, now we are fairly motoring away from the “native and national” car (registered with the European Union's Intellectual Property Office, or EUIPO, donchaknow).

Last month, Getir was awarded a contract to defy the coronavirus with the delivery of 300,000 Istanbul Governorship food support packages to 50,000 senior citizens. No tender, as per usual, was held and no price information was disclosed, but local media reported that Getir would finance 10,000 packages worth TRY1.5mn from its own resources.

Investments in Turkish startups remained flat at $19.8mn in the first quarter compared to $19.6mn in Q1 2019, but that was before Turkey joined the world as a fully paid-up member of the coronavirus fiasco, according to data from local startup portal Startups.Watch.

As if it needed saying, a dramatic fall is expected in the second quarter, although Turkish statisticians do tend to come up with some very curious official statistics.

A total of 27 startups attracted investments in Q1 versus 13 a year ago, while 78% of investments were below $1mn versus 82% in Q1 2019.

In Q1 this year, $4mn was invested in seed-funding-stage start-ups while $11mn went to early-stage and $5mn to late-stage.

Seven software companies attracted a total of $10.4mn, two fintechs got $5.2mn, three proptechs (property technology enterprises) raised $5.1mn, five artificial intelligence companies landed $4.7mn and three deep-techs brought in $4.2mn.

In February, Amazon acquired San Francisco-based data processing firm DataRow from Istanbul-based parent TeamSQL for an undisclosed sum.

The top 10 fundraisers—accounting for 91% of a total $19.8mn that went to Turkish startups in the first quarter—were Apsiyon (launched in 2009, it provides an online platform for property managers and it was 240th on the Deloitte Fast 500 EMEA 2018 ranking), Thundra (launched in 2017, it offers application observability and a security platform), App Samurai (mobile advertising platform), Vispera (launched in 2014, visual intelligence for retail), Biolive, PriSync, Mutlubiev, Temizlikyolda, Jib Games and Otsimo.

Three new angel and venture capital funds, namely Revo Capital II, ScaleX Ventures and Teknoloji Yatirim (TTGV1 Co-investment Fund) were established in Turkey in Q1.
 

Major M&As
Date	Sold	Stake	Price	Buyer	Seller
Apr-20	CY Vision	-	TRY13.5mn	Revo	-
Feb-20	Gunes Sigorta	10%	-	TVF	Groupama
Feb-20	Yapi Kredi	12%	€400mn	Placement	UniCredit
Feb-20	Novartis' plant	-	-	Generica	Novartis
Jan-20	SODA, ANACM, TRKCM, DENCM	-	-	Sisecam	Merger
Jan-20	McDonald's Turkey	100%	TRY281mn	Birlesik Holding	Anadolu Group
Jan-20	Sanovel	30%	$200mn	Yamma Investments	Toksoz Group
Jan-20	Total, M Oil	100%	$360mn	Oyak	Demiroren
Jan-20	Glovo Turkey	100%	-	Exit	Glovo
Jan-20	JCR Eurasia	85.05%	-	Consortium	Japan Credit Rating Agency
Jan-20	Intourist	100%	-	Anex Tour	Thomas Cook
Jan-20	Akbank	1.9%	TRY9.3mn	-	Minority shareholders
Jan-20	Halkbank	1.5mn	TRY6.76- 6.81	@Borsa Istanbul	Halkbank
Jan-20	Gunes Sigorta	27mn	TRY2.28-2.45	@Borsa Istanbul	Vakifbank
Jan-20	Inteltek	55%	-	Intralot Iberia	Turkcell
Jan-20	Goulette Shipping Cruise	100%	-	GPH - MSC	-
Jan-20	Batiliman	100%	$75-110mn	Habas	Baticim
Jan-20	Neckermann	100%	-	Anex Tour	Thomas Cook
Dec-19	Borsa Istanbul	10%	-	TVF	EBRD
Dec-19	Istanbul Gida	100%	TRY77mn	Yasar Serdengecti	Ulker Biskuvi
Dec-19	Is Invest	0.226mn	TRY4.49-4.55	@Borsa Istanbul	Isbank
Dec-19	Is Invest	0.162mn	TRY4.29-4.36	@Borsa Istanbul	Isbank
Dec-19	ICA	51%	$688.5mn	Consortium	Astaldi-Ictas
Dec-19	Adana, Aslan, Bolu, Mardin, Unye			OYAK	Merger
Dec-19	SOCAR Polymer	10%	-	Tekfen Holding	Socar-Pasha Holding
Dec-19	Gunes S., Halk S., Ziraat S., Halk H., Ziraat H., Vakif E.			TVF	Ziraat Bank, Halkbank, Vakifbank
Dec-19	Vakifbank	51.85%	TRY2.83bn	Treasury	Directorate of Foundations
Nov-19	Yapi Kredi	9.02%	TRY1.41bn	Koc Holding	UniCredit
Nov-19	Bucher Reisen & Oger Tours	100%	-	Anex Tour	Thomas Cook
Nov-19	Oztiryakiler	28.5%	-	Hoshizaki Corp.	Oztiryakiler
Nov-19	Istanbul Tower	100%	$594mn	ICBC Turkey	Yesil REIT
Sep-19	Air Manas	49%	€98,000	Avia Trade	Pegasus
Aug-19	Temsa Machinery	41%	-	Marubeni	Sabanci Holding
Aug-19	Denizbank	99.85%	$2.77bn	Emirates NBD	Sberbank
Jun-19	TSKB REIT	0.142 mn		TSKB	@Borsa Istanbul
Jun-19	Coca Cola Icecek	0.16mn/0.07%	TRY30.3	@Borsa Istanbul	Ozgorkey Holding
Jun-19	iyzico	majority	$165mn	PayU	Founders
May-19	Temsa Bus Light Truck	100%	TRY375mn	True Value Capital	Sabanci Holding
May-19	Parasut	-	-	Turkven, Early Bird	Revo, Ribbit
May-19	Foriba	-	-	Sovos	Revo Capital
May-19	Ictas Surdurulebilir	-	$100mn	EBRD	IC Energy Holding