After weeks of negotiations, the takeover of the delivery service Gorillas by the Turkish rival Getir has been completed.

This was announced by the Turkish food delivery service on Friday.

Getir did not provide any information about the purchase price.

Financial circles are reporting the combined company's valuation at $7 billion.

In the past financing rounds, both delivery services together came to a sum that was twice as high.

Maximilian Sachsen

Editor in Business

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The Gorillas owners will be paid primarily in Getir shares, reportedly worth $840 million.

40 million of this should go to the management around the founder Kagan Sümer.

A sum of 100 million dollars is to be paid in cash.

Grocery delivery services have boomed during the pandemic.

In 2020, super-fast food delivery services such as Gorillas or Flink were founded.

They promised to deliver yoghurt pots or toothpaste to their own four walls within ten minutes.

That went down well during the pandemic.

Investors hoped for high profits.

Gorillas and Flink achieved unicorn status in record time, so investors valued them at more than €1 billion.

So far, however, none of the providers has made a profit, including Getir.

Now the Turks have to deal with the complex integration of their previous competitor.

There is fierce cut-throat competition in the industry.

In order to win customers, the delivery services fight discount battles.

It costs her a lot of money.

In addition, companies are having trouble with rising prices and high personnel costs.

Experts have long considered industry consolidation to be inevitable.

Getir attacks in Europe

For Getir, a takeover of Gorillas would be an opportunity to gain a foothold in Europe.

The Turkish industry pioneer has existed since 2015. Since 2021, the company's suppliers have also been delivering groceries on German roads.

In March, Getir raised almost 700 million euros, with a valuation of more than 10 billion dollars.

So far, however, Getir has found it rather difficult to snatch market share from the established start-ups Gorillas and Flink.

This should change with the takeover, Getir is expanding its presence in Germany and Great Britain in particular.

The deal shows that Getir is driving consolidation in the sector, the Istanbul-based company said on Friday.

For gorillas, it's the end of a short-lived success story.

During the 2020 and 2021 ramp-up, the start-up expanded into new markets almost weekly, expanding extremely aggressively.

Apparently that went too fast.

As early as May, the company laid off 300 employees in administration, half of the employees there, in order to at least reduce the double-digit million losses per month.

The company also announced that it would withdraw from four markets and focus on the core markets of Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the USA.

Gorillas also announced in February that they wanted to collect another 630 million euros.

The company had completed a financing round of EUR 860 million just a few months earlier.

However, the search for investors proved difficult.

Over the summer, Gorillas is said to have negotiated a cash injection or a sale with various interested parties.