Demet Mutlu’s phone buzzes at 5:30 AM with notifications from Istanbul to Berlin: a new marketplace partner onboarding on Trendyol’s platform, a logistics update on same-day delivery timelines, and a press inquiry about the company’s recent decacorn funding round. It’s a fitting morning for a founder who has spent the last decade turning a dining-table startup into Turkey’s first decacorn, a super-app valued at over US $16.5 billion.

Born in New York City on August 22, 1981, and raised between the cosmopolitan streets of Istanbul and global boardrooms, Demet Mutlu was steeped early on in a blend of cultures and commerce. She graduated cum laude from New York University with a degree in Economics, having interned at Procter & Gamble in Switzerland and marketing roles at Altria in Japan. In 2008, she enrolled at Harvard Business School—only to drop out a year later when she spotted a gaping hole in Turkey’s nascent e-commerce market. With US $300,000 of personal savings and a conviction that Turkish consumers deserved more than generic online catalogs, she launched Trendyol in 2010 from a tiny Istanbul apartment.

Within 16 months, Trendyol’s fashion-focused marketplace generated US $150 million in gross merchandise value, far outpacing local rivals. Mutlu’s secret wasn’t just speed or selection, but an obsessive focus on localization: hand-curated brand partnerships, mobile-first interfaces in Turkish dialects, and a logistics backbone fine-tuned to navigate the city’s infamous traffic. As her team expanded from four co-founders to dozens of developers and merchandisers, she refused to outsource customer service—insisting that every call, chat, and email reflect Trendyol’s “hospitality ethos.”

By 2016, Trendyol had evolved into a “super-app,” adding instant grocery and meal delivery through Trendyol Go, a digital wallet (Trendyol Pay), and a second-hand fashion marketplace (Dolap). Each vertical launched after months of in-house market research and pilot programs, ensuring that new services met real user needs rather than chasing Silicon Valley buzzwords. When Alibaba Group invested US $728 million for a 70 percent stake in 2018—followed by an additional $350 million in 2021—Trendyol’s valuation soared near $9.4 billion, cementing its status as the MENA region’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform.

Yet the milestone that truly marked Mutlu’s rise came in August 2021, when Trendyol raised US $1.5 billion at a $16.5 billion valuation—Turkey’s first “decacorn.” Speaking at the funding announcement, Mutlu emphasized that the capital would accelerate infrastructure expansion, technology innovation, and the digitalization of thousands of Turkish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): “Our mission has always been to create positive impact,” she said. “With this round, we deepen our investment in local merchants and drive Turkey’s e-export potential”.

Behind these headline figures lies a career defined by calculated risks and an instinct for timing. At Harvard, Mutlu studied business cycles and market dynamics, but she credits her real education to the endless nights spent analyzing Turkish consumer behavior—studying chaotic bazaars, attending focus groups with young professionals, and surveying market data by dawn’s first light. This blend of rigorous analysis and on-the-ground intuition became Trendyol’s competitive edge.

Mutlu’s leadership extends beyond product and profit. A passionate advocate for gender equality in tech, she ensured that 55 percent of Trendyol’s workforce and 35 percent of its leadership roles were held by women—unusual figures in a region where women remain under-represented in STEM fields. She instituted flexible work policies, comprehensive maternity benefits, and ongoing mentorship programs, actions that earned her inclusion among Fortune’s “10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in the World” in 2011 and recognition on Business of Fashion’s BoF 500 list.

On the innovation front, Trendyol’s Tech Group—approved as a research and development center by Turkey’s Ministry of Industry and Technology in 2019—has pioneered AI-driven recommendation engines and drone-supported delivery trials. In late 2024, the company unveiled Trendyol AI, a proprietary large-language model specialized in Turkish colloquialisms and regional semantics. The model’s rollout reduced customer-service response times by 30 percent and improved first-contact resolution by 25 percent, underscoring Mutlu’s belief that data is neutral, but technology must serve human values.

Even as Trendyol’s footprint expands—to 27 European markets via en.trendyol.com, with local offices in Berlin and plans for warehousing in Romania by 2025—Mutlu maintains a focus on Turkey’s hinterlands. In October 2023, she announced a ₺700 million sponsorship of Turkey’s Süper Lig football leagues, aiming to fuse national pride with digital commerce by offering in-app match experiences and merchandise drops.

But perhaps her most enduring legacy will be the generation of entrepreneurs she has inspired. Through Trendyol Academy, launched in 2022, she mentors 500 young Turks each year—providing seed grants, co-working space, and startup clinics in Istanbul, Izmir, and Gaziantep. Alumni have gone on to found logistics platforms, sustainable-fashion labels, and agri-tech labs, often citing Mutlu’s emphasis on “local first, global always” as their guiding principle.

As dawn breaks over the Bosporus, Demet Mutlu reviews the day’s KPIs—active users, merchant satisfaction scores, AI retraining loops—and then moves on to her next frontier: a planned public listing in Istanbul or London once international revenue reaches 30–35 percent of total GMV. She has already secured regulatory approvals and convened underwriters; it’s a logical extension of Trendyol’s growth—but one she approaches with characteristic caution.

“Innovation requires both courage and humility,” she told a gathering at Davos 2023, reflecting on her journey from a Harvard dropout to the helm of a decacorn. “We must dare greatly, yet remain grounded in the communities we serve.”

In a landscape where e-commerce often feels commoditized, Demet Mutlu’s story stands out for its combination of visionary scale, local authenticity, and human-centered leadership. Her path—from dorm-room entrepreneur to the boardrooms of Alibaba and beyond—offers a blueprint not just for scaling startups, but for building ecosystems that uplift entire societies. As Trendyol prepares its next €1 billion expansion in Eastern Europe and pilots drone deliveries in Anatolia’s remote villages, one truth endures: when a founder asks the right questions, connects deeply with both data and people, and invests in the potential of every team member, a single platform can transform how millions live, work, and shop.