One of Turkey's most famous and successful e-commerce entrepreneurs: Who is Nevzat Aydın?

Nevzat Aydın, the founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti, graduated from Boğaziçi University Computer Engineering Department, one of the most valuable universities in Turkey, and went to San Francisco in 2000 to receive an MBA education. While he was studying here, he conducted detailed research on successful startups in the USA and their business models. He had the opportunity to closely observe the start-up businesses in Silicon Valley.

When he was interested in the idea of ordering food over the Internet during his research, he left his education in order to realize this business idea and returned to Turkey immediately. He shared his idea with his closest friends, Cem Nufusi and Melih Ödemiş, based on the fact that restaurants take food orders from users over the internet.

Nevzat Aydın (born 8 March 1976) is a Turkish internet entrepreneur, angel investor and a mentor. Aydın is the co-founder and former CEO of Yemeksepeti, the leading online food delivery portal in Turkey. During his lead in 2015, Yemeksepeti was acquired by the German-based Delivery Hero for $589 million (£378 m), which was the biggest valuation ever yet in Turkish internet history. 

The three founding partners of Yemeksepeti got a job in a 40-square-meter office and immediately started negotiations for the restaurant. They were rejected from the first fifteen restaurants they interviewed. Although they had a hard time convincing the restaurants in the first place, they set out with 26 restaurants after a difficult agreement process. In the first place, they received their orders by printer and fax, and this practice continued for a long time.

Then they signed a partnership agreement with the German Samwer brothers, the founders of Rocket Internet company. After this partnership, the company's orders increased and Yemeksepeti started with one or two orders a day and reached 25 thousand daily orders in 2010 in the market. For the first five years of this ten-year period, they tried to survive with almost no money. Thanks to their belief in their ideas, they managed to become a good team and maintain the stability of the company.

The food cart, which started to take orders via mobile with the iPhone, reached 900 thousand users as of the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. In 2012, General Atlantic made an investment of $44 million in Yemeksepeti and became the owner of a minority stake in the company. After this investment, the growth of Yemeksepeti started to increase exponentially. In May 2015, Germany-based Delivery Hero company acquired 100% of the company's shares for $589 million. Nevzat Aydın continued his duty as CEO of Yemeksepeti for a long time. The story of Yemeksepeti continues to be one of the most successful stories of Turkish internet entrepreneurship today.

While determining the name of Yemeksepeti, they took care not to have Turkish characters in it, and to make it easy to understand and sympathetic. They were also inspired by baskets hanging from windows in ancient times. (There were people who shopped by holding glass baskets to shops and stores under the buildings in Turkey. And this business was very common in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and 80s.)

With the start of ADSL service in Turkey in 2004, there was a rapid increase in the number of internet users. This has become a turning point not only for Yemeksepeti but for all internet companies that have managed to survive until then. The market started to grow rapidly. They also started to benefit from this network after they were selected as Endeavor Entrepreneurs in 2007.

Who is Nevzat Aydın?

Aydın, who was born in Istanbul on March 8, 1976, resigned from his position as CEO on November 1, 2021. In 2015, it joined Delivery Hero, the world's largest online food ordering platform, for $589 million, the largest valuation ever.

His first project at the age of 21 was to take a group of 700 people to the U2 concert in Thessaloniki, Greece. He worked as an intern in many corporate companies during his student years.

He founded GEN Turkey, the Turkish branch of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), which operates in 178 different countries, in 2020, under the chairmanship of its own board of directors.

In 2010, he became one of the 15 people in the world who attracted the attention of US President Barack Obama and invited him to the Entrepreneurship Summit.