Portfolio Companies: A Look Ahead to 2023
Despite facing market challenges, our portfolio companies exhibited impressive resilience and growth in 2022. In the second fund, we invested in 16 new companies, bringing our total number of active portfolio companies to 19, including those from our first fund. This diverse group of companies has consistently demonstrated their potential and drive for success. In this blog post, we will share updates on the progress of these companies in 2022 and their plans for the coming year. We have high expectations for them in 2023 and are excited to see what the future holds. And as the 212 team, we are determined to continue building upon these successes and are keen to seek new opportunities to support early-stage startups in Turkey. Our investment momentum will only increase as we embark on the year ahead, which we are entering with the anticipation of new fundraising. Given all that is in store, we do not doubt that 2023 will be an exciting year full of potential for our portfolio companies and our firm.
It was a good year for 123 Form Builder in 2022, with internal processes becoming more efficient and many new customers joining, such as Allianz, Husqvarna, and Yamaha. 123 is looking forward to 2023 and aiming to continue improving its product to support its growth while staying safe in the ever-changing international context.
The past year has been a time of great success and changes, with many noteworthy accomplishments for AppSamurai. The company was named among the FT500 companies while making it to the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies in the US in 2022.
The company’s namesake user acquisition product AppSamurai joined forces with Xiaomi and became their core agency partner in EMEA. AppSamurai has also extended its inventory for gaming apps and helps them build ROAS-positive campaigns.
On the other hand, the user engagement platform Storyly continued with its growth journey, expanding its presence in key markets globally. Having been implemented by over 350 brands in more than 40 countries, Storyly was named the “Most Effective App Engagement Platform” by Effective Mobile Marketing Magazine. On top of many “high performer” badges it received from G2 throughout the year, it is also closing the year as the leader of the Mobile Marketing Momentum grid — another indicator of the product’s high-growth trajectory.
Avatao experienced significant changes in 2022. Driven by economic hardness, they went through substantial cost optimizations while maintaining their business results. These optimizations gave Avatao financial stability and a long runway. In the product, they created a compliance training service that provides companies with peace of mind to cover the requirements for security compliance standards like PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, and alike. Avatao increased its business in the US, which now accounts for a substantial share of its revenue.
In its third year since its founding, Bolt Insight grew: it achieved 155,000 unique surveys a year and collected data in 87 countries for 41 clients. The company ended 2022 with an impressive multinational client list, including brands like Capco, Philip Morris, Ford, Havas Media, L’Oréal, McKinsey, Diageo, Unilever, KPMG, Reckitt, Samsung, Vodafone, Pepsico, Zeiss, and Premier Foods. It continued to grow within the existing clients and added new global brands like IKEA in Sweden, Canada, and the UK.
Bolt Insight launched two new products previously unseen in the market research industry:
- Bolt Hackathon: Overnight Research Tool to test product and service ideas in a matter of hours, designed for ideation workshops. Unilever tested its 40+ ideas with 5,000+ consumers across three countries in 10 hours.
- Bolt Chat: A new SaaS solution MVP is complete, and Zeiss and Medela are piloting it. Bolt Chat is a self-serve consumer chat platform to help marketers instantly connect with their consumers and raise their consumer empathy.
In 2023, the company expects to grow more in the SaaS space and continue to grow its client base.
Chooch has established itself as a global leader in the computer vision category in 2022. The company received several awards, and Gartner and IDC analyst reports, including the latest IDC report, featured them multiple times, putting the company in the leader’s quadrant. Chooch was named winner in the 2022 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards conducted by The Business Intelligence Group; and “Best Overall Computer Vision Company” by AI Breakthrough. These accolades are testaments to the deeptech product the company brings to market, solving fundamental problems within and with computer vision AI. Chooch launched the Visionary Partner Program, leading and enabling more than 70 ecosystem partners to deliver computer vision AI solutions with Chooch. This initiative generated dozens of opportunities each, leading to a year of fundamental growth with record deployments, bookings, and partner activity as the company and market scale into 2023 and beyond.
Fazla had another year of exponential growth in 2022 and reached a milestone in a second era for Fazla Gida. Established in 2016, the company stands as an example of a social start-up working towards creating a fair and sustainable world for younger generations. To do so, they provide technology-based, holistic solutions to reduce waste and waste-borne carbon emissions along the value chain. Placing social impact at the heart of its business, Fazla Gida has completed more than 150,000 donation operations so far, half of which took place in 2022, which shows the rapidly increasing impact. In 2022, Fazla Gida grew by four times vs. last year. In 6 years, Fazla Gida managed to save more than 58,000 tonnes of food and prevent 83,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. Cooperating with Gida Kurtarma Dernegi, Fazla Gida regularly reaches over 1.25 million people in need around Turkey. Before stepping into 2023, the company raised the bar again with a new name: “Fazla.”
Fazla has expanded into new industries and carried its expertise on food waste into various waste streams, including packaging, textile, and chemical. They also announced that they had become a B Corp company receiving the highest environment score ever in Turkey. With its new name and logo, Fazla is ready to maintain its exponential growth in 2023 and expand to Spain using its successful business model in Turkey.
2022 witnessed the global resurgence of travel, and HotelRunner seized the opportunity to accelerate its expansion and consolidate its power over the hospitality industry. Having exceptional product development capabilities, HotelRunner delivered a batch of much-needed products that particularly benefit the hospitality businesses around the globe and create a bigger travel economy for all industry members.
2022’s giant leap forward was the strategic partnership with Wix.com Ltd. (NASDAQ: WIX), and as an outcome of this partnership, Wix Hotels, the solution of Wix for the hospitality industry, has been redeveloped and launched with its new name as “Wix Hotels by HotelRunner.” HotelRunner Team attends events and exhibitions to bolster its reach, collect data, and refine its tailor-made solutions for the hospitality industry. Attending 20+ key global events, including top gatherings such as HITEC, WTM London, and The Phocuswright Conference, HotelRunner observed contemporary challenges and took an active role in the conversation on the future of the hospitality industry.
In 2022, HotelRunner was selected as Booking.com’s Premier Connectivity Partner 8 years in a row and was recognized as Top Connectivity Provider Globally by Expedia Group for the second year in a row, sealing its position as a trusted partner. As a part of the global expansion, HotelRunner signed a memorandum of understanding in June with Hospitality Web Services (HWS) and National Tourism Confederation (CNT) to accelerate the digitalization of the tourism industry in North Africa, starting with Morocco. This memorandum marks a milestone for broadening the domain in North Africa. HotelRunner’s 2023 agenda will be simultaneously growing its talent pool and leading the high-tech market with its products tailored to the hospitality industry. HotelRunner will further accelerate its steady growth and agile expansion in North America and LATAM with well-planned strategic moves, including inaugurating offices in the Americas. This thrust will benefit the company’s trademark talent acquisition operations by attracting a top cadre of software developers. The company plans to cement its leading position through growth fueled by the rise of travel and talents’ unique development skills.
2022 was a phenomenal year for the Insider team; in many ways, it was “a year of firsts.” In March, the company unlocked an extraordinary achievement by becoming one of the world’s few women-led, women-founded B2B SaaS businesses. They launched the shemarkables, a movement dedicated to connecting, championing, and celebrating remarkable women in the customer experience. As voted by users, Insider’s platform has retained the #1 leadership position across multiple G2 reports. IDC recognized Insider as a CDP leader in its latest MarketSpace report. The company launched an inaugural RESHAPE Customer Experience Awards, celebrating global excellence in CX. On the subject of awards, they also won a few, including one which cements its position as one of the best places to work, which is timely. The company welcomed 200+ new clients. Finally, they had the enormous privilege of connecting the global community with some of the most influential leaders of our time, including Sir Richard Branson, Bozoma Saint John, and Walter Isaacson. Everything they achieved in 2022 was an extraordinary build-up to 2023. Insider is looking forward to sharing more exciting updates in 2023.
MallIQ expanded its branding with LocatIQ to demonstrate that the coverage and use cases of location intelligence and real-time personalized engagements go beyond shopping malls.
MallIQ added quite a few new FIs & Brands to their client base, extending the HSBC Singapore agreement for three years, adding HSBC MENA as a customer, and adding Is Bank, Vakifbank, and Turkiye Finans in Malaysia, UAE, and Turkey. They extended engagement & analytics services to Starbucks to 600 stores and are in the process of adding new countries like Japan and UAE.
MallIQ added a few new use cases that utilize their unique store-level accurate, real-time location technology. The first use-case is for risk management and fraud prevention of card acceptance and app login. The second use-case concerns alternative credit scoring for BNPL & micro-credit for no-file & thin-file individuals, allowing for financial inclusion in developing countries and youth. MallIQ also added Microsoft, Oracle, and PROSA as partners in 2022, expanding on the partnership model developed in previous years with KPMG, FIS/Worldpay, and The Entertainer Group. This model allowed Mall IQ to grow considerably with qualified leads and high-converting introductions. MallIQ maintains a 100% conversion rate from pilot to full production in the 14 countries they serve worldwide.
Marti continued to scale its fleet of e-bikes, e-scooters, and e-mopeds across Turkey in 2022. In addition, the company introduced a carpooling service connecting riders with drivers traveling in the same direction as its fourth modality. Marti announced its upcoming listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2023 and will use the proceeds to scale its existing services further and offer new services in the forthcoming year.
Metrobi launched operations in 6 new states and reached ten active states last year. They’re now partnering up with local businesses in Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, and Denver, in addition to the existing Boston, New York, DC, and Chicago markets. The significant change to the business model from a previous pay-as-you-go model to a subscription system dramatically improved Metrobi’s customer retention and allowed them to provide more value. They also saw the delivery bookings quadruple from the previous year. Metrobi continued to launch many impactful features, the most noteworthy being its driver-matching algorithm and Receiver Platform, offering complete transparency to the delivery recipients. In 2022, 25 new people joined Metrobi’s diverse environment — they now have team members from 7 countries! In 2023, the company is on track to launch the Bring Your Own Driver feature in Q1, enabling them to reach an entirely new segment and diversify its customer base.
2022 was the most remarkable year for OMMA. OmmaSign, the digital signage software which was the first product at Omma Visual Marketing Platform, woke up again after the 2-year pandemic. In June, the company signed regional distribution agreements in MENA, and the UK made an essential partnership with Vestel and agreed to work together to create a difference with Vestel’s new Smart Signages and Omma. Additionally, they refactored the Android app to expand its coverage in the android world. Thanks to this RnD period, the company became a global partner with ProDVX, one of the most crucial Android-based player/display manufacturers.
In addition, the company started to work on a new product called OmmaVQ, the real-time personalized video platform, during the pandemic. They succeeded with many projects in 2021 and decided to create a new standalone product on their platform. They launched OmmaVQ 2.0 at the beginning of this year and focused on Finance, Insurance because it is a real-time service that doesn’t require data sharing. They also found a perfect fit in video shopping and direct sales industries and quickly added new customers from those verticals.
As a result, the company doubled its MRR in 3 quarters and tripled its pipeline, which ensures 40% of the 2023 target. OMMA looks forward to raising new funds in 2023 to expedite the company’s growth and exceed its targets in 2023 and beyond.
Along with the global expansion activities, SmartMessage focused on reshaping its main product for even better customer engagement in 2022 and produced a state-of-art, all-in-one cloud-empowered marketing platform that will compete in the SaaS space as well. As in-person events started again after the pandemic, SmartMessage met with selective audiences in Europe and Southeast Asia at prestigious events to increase global reach and won renowned International Business Awards, aka a Stevie, in the software category. New additions to the customer portfolio included Turkey’s top taxi service BiTaksi, energy industry pioneer Petrol Ofisi’s Credin, and Anadolubank, one of the leading private banks in Turkey.
As Q-Commerce declined in 2022 as a shining star of fast-growth Solvoyo customers, its transformative practices in collecting, correcting, and ingesting all sorts of data near real-time without a traditional technology backbone became a best practice for its platform.
The company’s experience working with new economy customers, such as in e-commerce, put Solvoyo in a great position to bring our latest technologies to other industries and optimize retail and CPG supply chains on a bigger, global scale.
Finally, the inflation and economic outlook of 2023 will continue to emphasize the role of resilient supply chains that can make fast, analytical, and autonomous decisions, creating an opportunity to bring Solvoyo to more organizations.
For Trio Mobil, 2022 was a tremendous year. First, Trio Mobil has reached approximately 200 members worldwide, and the US team has planted seeds of dominance in the market. Along with its new members, Trio Mobil expanded its portfolio of international brands to include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Smurfit Kappa, P&G, Unilever, Cargill, Ferrero, Toyota, and numerous others. Trio Mobil launched its largest worldwide roll-out deal by putting its solutions in Arcelik’s more than 40 facilities across 12 countries. In addition to Arcelik, other prospective regional and worldwide roll-outs are ongoing. With the launching of the Edge AI Video Analytics solution TRUE-AI, the technological differentiation of Trio Mobil moved to another point. Gartner’s “Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2023” report featured and published Trio Mobil’s technology as a pioneer AI-combined IoT solution.
There will be a lot more to come in 2023! Trio Mobil plans to have a significant foothold in the US market after dominance in the EU and APAC. The company is about to announce new products and features. Stay tuned for new logos and cutting-edge technologies.
2022 was an exciting year of organizing many events, working with great companies, and scaling up to different markets worldwide. Wellbees now serves over 100K+ employees in 50+ companies, 17 countries, and eight languages. In April, the company received 2.2 million USD in funding from the investment tour led by 212 ventures. After April, Wellbees achieved x2 growth and closed the year by reaching nearly x3 increase in US dollars since the beginning of the year. The company organized two Wellbees Challenges in 2022. The steps taken in the first inter-company challenge helped bring electricity to Abekouta Village in Gambia. In the second challenge, 57 companies took more than 500 million steps and donated to the UNICEF Turkish National Committee to secure a month of vital, ready-to-use therapeutic food packages for undernourished children. Wellbees was the only employee wellbeing product awarded “Best Product for HR Tech” in the prestigious SaaS Awards 2022. 2023 anticipates a year of more customers, more countries, and more awards while evolving the product into its best version.
