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In the rapidly evolving world of digital retail, Trendyol has emerged as a name to watch. Founded in Türkiye in 2010, the company has since grown into a decacorn with a $16.5bn valuation in 2021 and a global customer base currently exceeding 40 million. Now, Trendyol is making waves in the Gulf, leveraging a decade of technological expertise, local partnerships and deep consumer insight to reshape e-commerce in the region.
As Trendyol debuts as a sponsor of GITEX Global 2025, taking the stage on October 15th to showcase its advanced use of AI, its presence signals a clear intent: to successfully transplant and scale its technological know-how across the MENA region. Here, president Çağlayan Çetin talks to Gulf Business about Trendyol’s ambitious expansion, unwavering commitment to SMEs and the massive technological investments shaping its next decade.
Core proposition
Trendyol entered a competitive Gulf market with a proven model honed over a decade in Türkiye. “Our focus as an online marketplace lies in giving customers the right product at the right price and providing sellers with the tools and insights to scale at pace,” Çetin states. This strategy has resulted in a market-leading platform supporting over 250,000 merchants and serving more than 30 million domestic customers with a diverse, multi-category offering across fashion, beauty, homeware, accessories and electronics enhanced by an AI-supported shopping experience. It has also enabled the company’s international roll out into Germany, Azerbaijan, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Gulf, successfully acquiring over nine million more customers.
In the Gulf, Trendyol has secured more than 3.7 million customers, a figure underpinned by local teams, dedicated offices and regional warehouses. The marketplace model is the undeniable engine of this success, generating 85 per cent of regional revenues.
Çetin is emphatic about the role of local businesses: “We currently have 5,000 local sellers on board… That shows one thing very clearly, local businesses are at the heart of our strategy and we expect to grow that local seller number exponentially before the end of the year.”
With 35 per cent of all products on the platform being sold by fast growing local brands and SMEs, Trendyol is rapidly transforming into a truly indigenous platform.
Mastering hyper-localisation in the GCC
Trendyol’s aggressive expansion across the Gulf is built upon a hyper-localisation strategy driven by deep, market-specific insights from the region’s two largest digital leaders, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. President Çetin is clear on the fundamental rule for success: “You cannot operate from a distance.” This imperative has shaped the company’s approach, necessitating heavy investment in local infrastructure, local people and alliances.
Saudi Arabia quickly became the company’s vital launchpad, now standing as its largest international market and the source of 75 per cent of all regional orders. The team’s early experience revealed a key behavioural insight: online shopping in the kingdom is highly discovery-led. “People do not always open apps looking for one specific product. They want inspiration, they want to browse, they want to discover new brands,” Çetin explains. This understanding is crucial, directly informing Trendyol’s intense focus on curation, local content, and highly relevant collections. To serve this immense demand, the company has established local offices and fulfillment centers to reduce delivery times and expanded local teams to provide sellers with hands-on support for onboarding, inventory management, and scaling operations nationwide.
The UAE, by contrast, presents a broader, more diverse shopper base that primarily values variety and a seamless digital experience. The company responded swiftly by investing in a dedicated warehouse, office, and team, which has significantly cut delivery times and bolstered customer trust. Across both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the core strategy remains the same: investing deeply in local infrastructure, local teams, and strong local partnerships to ensure the experience is optimised for both shoppers and sellers. Trendyol’s vision extends beyond the GCC core as it prepares to establish a ‘Digital Silk Road’.
Leveraging Türkiye’s geographical proximity and its technological capabilities, the company is preparing to expand services to Iraq and is also exploring the possibility of extending its services to Syria, aiming to contribute constructively to those countries’ e-commerce ecosystems. This expansion also includes a significant logistical development: utilising a new transit land route through Iraq that will enhance delivery options for Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries. “This development marks a significant step in expanding our delivery options,” Çetin states, underlining their commitment to regional connectivity and scale. For Trendyol, localisation is foundational, not optional, and is continuously supported by technology and deep partnerships.
“Localisation is key to our success. It’s about how we present ourselves, it’s about how we communicate, it’s about the type of product we offer, as well as, of course, the type of companies that we partner with to best serve our customers,” Çetin states. This commitment manifests through the following approaches:
• Cultural and tech adaptation: The platform offers full Arabic support, local customer service, and relevant payment and delivery options. To empower cross-border sellers, Trendyol has armed them with Türkiye’s first large language model (LLM), enabling seamless translation of product details. The product mix includes Trendyol’s beloved own brand, Trendyol Collection plus curated seasonal capsules, modest wear collections and ranges from some of the biggest local and international brands, balancing cultural relevance with global trends.
• Social commerce: The company has cultivated one of the region’s largest influencer networks, partnering with over 15,000 creators across Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Çetin notes that these experiences, “powered by digital storytelling and an intuitive app, drive acquisition and build emotional connections that keep customers coming back.”
SMEs are an “absolutely integral part of our platform,” Çetin emphasises. Trendyol helps them flourish by unlocking audiences and providing scale. The digital Seller Center gives merchants full autonomy over their operations, from inventory and pricing to campaigns and payments, while equipping them with real-time insights to make smarter business decisions.
Çetin uses a personal story to illustrate this impact: “I give the example of my local barber, who has one shop in Istanbul and is now selling his well-regarded hair lotion on Trendyol, across the world.”
This ambition is magnified through strategic collaborations, such as with Zid, which connects Trendyol directly with thousands of Saudi SMEs, and Monsha’at, the Saudi SME authority, for building trust and facilitating seller onboarding. “From female-led fashion startups to independent home décor businesses, we’ve seen thousands of entrepreneurs use Trendyol as their launchpad. For us, helping SMEs succeed is central to how we contribute to the region’s digital economy,” he adds.
Of technology and trust
With a dedicated tech team of more than 2,000 people, Trendyol’s identity as a tech-powered business ensures that innovation is not an add-on but rather is embedded in every customer and seller interaction. Çetin confirms this strategy: “As a tech-powered business, AI is embedded in everything we do, shaping both the customer experience and the seller journey.”
For customers, AI ensures shopping feels instinctively personal, offering curated product recommendations, powering smoother, native discovery in Arabic, and even generating culturally relevant items like their AI-designed modest wear collection. For sellers, the technology is an empowerment tool, providing crucial real-time insights for demand forecasting, competitive pricing, and efficient inventory management. Furthermore, AI simplifies the onboarding process for local SMEs with real-time translation tools, allowing them to list products quickly and accurately. The investment in technology directly correlates to customer trust and loyalty.
Logistical improvements have been dramatic: by establishing local warehouses in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and partnering with last-mile providers like Aramex, Starlink, and Saudi Post, Trendyol has reduced initial delivery times from up to nine days to approximately four days, significantly increasing reliability. This proximity ensures returns are managed efficiently, a crucial trust factor. Çetin stresses, “Trust absolutely drives loyalty so ensuring we have a great experience is vital,” a commitment upheld by the Trendyol Assistant, an AI-driven virtual agent that handles customer queries quickly and accurately in multiple languages.
Beyond operational efficiency, Trendyol is committing capital to build the foundational infrastructure for future dominance. The company is securing its digital ecosystem through three major strategic investments. First, a landmark partnership with Castle Investments is underway to build a $500m, 48MW data centre in Ankara, which will provide the necessary immense capacity and secure data management to ensure optimal performance and scalability for their 40 million-plus customers. Second, alongside partners ADQ, Ant International, and Baykar, Trendyol is actively developing a fintech platform in Türkiye to potentially offer AI-powered digital payments, loans, deposits, and insurance. Finally, they are evaluating developing their own cloud business with the crucial support of their strategic investor, Alibaba’s AliCloud, which will further support AI-driven product development plans.
Çetin shares that these wide-ranging investments prove their commitment is long-term: “Together, these initiatives show that we’re not just building for today’s needs; we’re laying the foundations for the next decade of digital commerce right across the broader region.”
Leading the digital frontier
The future of e-commerce in MENA is not a distant prospect, but a landscape actively being shaped by three pivotal trends: personalised shopping experiences, advanced technology integration, and influencer marketing. Recognising that the Gulf is an intensely mobile-first, socially-driven market, Trendyol has built its acquisition and retention strategy on authentic digital storytelling and cultural resonance. This approach is best exemplified by the company’s powerful social commerce engine, which leverages a vast network of over 15,000 creators across Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.
By meeting customers “where they are on their phones, in their feeds, and in their cultural moments,” Trendyol drives organic engagement, acquisition, and the emotional connections that keep shoppers returning. This commitment to continually evolving the platform through AI-driven applications underscores their positioning to lead the market.
Trendyol’s major sponsorship at GITEX Global 2025 and Çetin’s dedicated session on the use of AI only serves to underscore this momentum and belief in the platform’s scalability. Ultimately, Çetin emphasises the long-term vision: “By focusing on customer satisfaction, technological advancement, and sustainable local investment, we’re confident Trendyol is well positioned to thrive in the fast-changing e-commerce landscape and continue supporting both sellers and shoppers across the Gulf.”
Trendyol is not just competing in the market; it’s actively working to lead its digital transformation.
