At the DFF we invest with high-conviction in reuse- and recycle marketplaces. That’s why we are excited to welcome Getmobil to our portfolio as we lead their Seed round. Turkey is an absolute outlier refurbished market. The price of a new iPhone in Ankara is far higher than in any other place in the world. The government has created a unique and far-reaching regulatory framework and incentive scheme and import is limited.

Our DFF re-use portfolio covers a range of B2B and C2B/B2C models spanning various industries, all converging at the intersection of three key characteristics:

• The physical nature of the supply side often means that these transaction historically used to be offline and local; whether it is the silver teaspoons traded at Vintage Cash Cow, the used mobile electronics at NorthLadder or the scrap aluminium at Metycle. These marketplaces remove non value-add layers from the supply chain and geographically expand the supply and demand side — resulting in a much better value proposition for all participants
• The right-to-repair movement, whether establishing itself as ‘hard’ legislation and regulation like in Europe or ‘softer’ through consumer choices, leads to the establishment of refurbishing supply chains and fuels demand in parallel which usually leads to supply-constrained dynamics on the platform
• There are significant environmental and social benefits that accrue beyond the platform participants: European consumers that buy a refurbished iPhone at Swappie or Back Market do not only do so because the devices come at a significant discount to new prices but also because the incremental benefits of the next model do not outweigh the (financial and environmental) costs of a new product — how many megapixels does one really need?

We are specifically excited about the reuse opportunities in the consumer electronics space, a fast-growing USD 300B market globally. Despite increasing adoption in many markets, inefficiencies persist in the value chain, with traded-in phones circulating multiple times before reaching new owners. But the tide is changing: in Europe, phone trade-ins are now central to mobile network operators’ and retailers’ strategies. MediaMarkt, a leading retailer, doubled its ‘trade-in rate’ over the last year to a whopping 220k traded-in products.

While the formal refurbishing sector in Turkey is in its infancy, the informal trade is estimated to eclipse its entire USD 7B new device sales market. Tens of thousands of merchants make a living in this informal segment.

It is against this backdrop that we are really enthusiastic to back Mehmet and his sister Zeynep who jointly founded Getmobil in 2021. Getmobil combines what we believe is required to create a fast-growing and healthy refurbished ecosystem in Turkey:

• A highly-quality three-sided marketplace that connects consumers, merchants and trade-in partners in a compliant and quality-assured manner
• Sophisticated trade-in technology to power trade-ins for retailers and e-commerce platforms, both online and offline
• A SaaS offering (and an inclusive mindset) that powers small merchants’ trade-in activities and uniquely allowing them to offer their products online within the regulatory framework

Mehmet, who started Getmobil out of frustration with the status quo while he was operating a small phone repair shop in 2018, is poised to uplift an entire industry and do it hand in hand with the thousands of merchants in the space. The fintech and insurtech opportunities around the marketplace represent full-blown opportunities in their own right.

Mehmet’s and his team’s deeply rooted passion and high quality execution have truly impressed us and we are very excited to be part of the ride.

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