Getir set for break-up and Mubadala cash injection

Food delivery start-up Getir has agreed a restructuring that will see Abu Dhabi’s wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company lead a $250mn funding injection and acquire majority control of its Turkish grocery operations.

Shareholders in the Istanbul-based group approved a break-up on Sunday that will leave it with a food delivery business in Turkey, controlled by existing investor Mubadala, and a separate standalone business comprising its other assets.

Founded in 2015, Getir was a pioneer among a group of start-ups that raised billions of dollars during the Covid-19 pandemic to deliver groceries and other essentials to customers within minutes. However, rising interest rates in the subsequent years and falling technology stock prices damped investor appetite to fund their heavy losses.

Getir was valued at nearly $12bn in 2022, but a slowdown in venture capital markets forced it to slash its operations, and it was valued at less than a quarter of that sum when it raised $500mn last year.

Most of the company’s rapid grocery rivals have already been sold or shut down as consumer demand shifted after lockdowns eased. Meanwhile online food delivery groups in Europe and the US have racked up more than $20bn in combined operating losses since they went public, and remain locked in a battle for market share.

Getir’s Turkish delivery business will be led by its longtime manager Batuhan Gultakan. The company’s founder Nazim Salur will continue to have a role in the entity as a minority investor and board member, according to a statement on Monday.

Salur and Getir’s co-founders will hold the controlling stake in the second standalone group comprising businesses outside of the Turkish grocery operations, including in ecommerce, taxi hailing and the FreshDirect grocery service in New York.

Getir previously had operations in the US and Europe including in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. It scaled back those efforts this year to focus its delivery operations on its core Turkish market.

Getir has also in the past received significant backing from venture capital group G Squared and prominent investor Michael Moritz, who was previously at the Silicon Valley investor Sequoia Capital for almost 40 years.

“This capital injection reflects our strong confidence in the promising future of the company’s core business in Turkey,” Hani Barhoush, a Getir board member and chief executive of Mubadala’s diversified investments platform, said in a statement.

Mubadala has separately been embroiled in a bitter board fight over the future of the once high-flying European insurance start-up Wefox, the Financial Times has previously reported.