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when ​Zynga bought Peak’s casual card business for $100mn​. ​It had also bought a company in Turkey’s gaming scene before, having acquired Gram Games in 2018​.
Peak was founded in 2010 in Istanbul. Besides Earlybird, it’s backed by venture capital firms Endeavor Catalyst and Hummingbird Ventures.
“The Peak team proved that we can produce tech unicorns in Turkey and this is a great milestone for the local ecosystem,” Pamir Gelenbe, a partner at Hummingbird Ventures, told Bloomberg. He said the seed investors received a return of more than 200 times their initial investment.
A “unicorn” is a privately held startup company valued at over $1bn, a statistical rarity.
Payguru, established in 2005, provides cash mobile payments and bank transfer services in Turkey through three mobile network operators and bank transfer/ATM payments through eight major banks​.
The company has over 1,300 merchants on its platform and processed over 13mn transactions in the past 12 months.
TPAY is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, with teams based in Egypt. Its shareholders are Helios Investment Partners, the leading Africa-focused private investment firm, and A15, the Middle East’s leading tech investment fund.
Within the global fintech sector, direct carrier billing (DCB) will grow exponentially to reach $28bn by 2023, with over 1.5bn users, equating to 39% of those with a smartphone, TPAY said in a statement.
The number of users in the Middle East is expected to grow 58% over the three years between 2020 and 2023 to reach 60mn DCB users, with revenue growing by 30%, to a total of $800mn by 2023, it added.
9.2.5 ​Metallurgy & mining corporate news
Mining group Ariana Resources’ operating licence for the Ivrindi gold mine project in Turkey has been ​extended​ by 10 years​ to 3 June 2030, with the possibility of another extension.
Ivrindi is 100% held by Ariana, outside its 50:50 Red Rabbit joint venture, which owns the producing Kiziltepe operation. The property lies 100 km by road from the Kiziltepe sector of the Red Rabbit project.
The mineral resource estimate for the Ivrindi project is 207,000 tonnes at 1.65 g/t gold, for 11,000 oz gold, in the inferred category and the company said it demonstrated potential for further growth with additional drilling.
The management resource target for future exploration at Ivrindi is currently 500,000 t at 2 g/t gold.
69​ TURKEY Country Report​ July 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com