Around 1 year ago, a Turkish enterprise, Getir, became the Turkeys 2nd unicorn by reaching a value of 1 billion dollar milestone. The subject of this post is not the getir app and company but the starting point is here. I have recognized some potential harms back then. After 1 year or so, the courier protests and strikes started in Turkey due to high inflation rates. In this post, i will try to grasp this situation from the beginning, combine it with the similar apps and business models, evaluate it from the process perspective and understand the results.
Before the age of dawn... No don't worry i'm not going that much back :) Today, the evolution of our behaviours are fast enough. Before the internet age, we were able to order a pizza over the phone. But it was not that much widespread in the society. It involves the delivery carriers fee and other expanses. Than the internet came around and brought online orders into our lives. This way we have re-discovered an important concept. Laziness. Thanks to internet, the phones were not always busy, the orders were always complete and accurate and they were in front of the manager in an instant. Then these applications started becoming a norm and used widespread, the entrepreneurs started entrepreneuring to dominate this market.
Recently we have witnessed these enterprises getting bigger. The online shopping started with e-commerce. It was really easy to browse through the products without having to go to shopping physically. Than this e-commerce logic entered the restaurants and markets. This is basically how we reached today and now we are shopping and ordering food online a lot. These are big parts of our vital daily needs.
There are lots of effort and hard-work behind these e-commerce and e-market applications. We shouldn't neglect it. They needed a solid software in the background to begin with, since they are working in digital world. They have invested in research and development and became the big players in the software engineering world. So the bottom line is: This trend started in developed countries first and became widely popular in Turkey, which resulted in the 2nd unicorn company. The first one was a gaming company, Peak Games. It sounds so far so good.
We humans are almost never evaluate the events through historical and sociological angles. An idea turns into an applications, then into a habit and then into a norm. I have couple of notes about the process above. The first one is laziness as i have mentioned. In other words, developing a habit and then addiction or dependence to a service. The second point is the concept of success is evaluated via the amount of money in all this.
At this point, i will separate the matter into 2 categories as e-commerce and e-marketing. You might already be aware of the overabundance of the e-commerce platforms during ads the black friday or something. That part is a monster that feeds on our consumption addiction. There are lots of 3rd parties in it, from phones to clothes, household appliances to pet food. But e-marketing side is a bit more complex. Let me begin with the notes i have taken from their advertisements:
Most of their ads are emphasizing on how fast and easy it is to buy things. They are basically formed around the idea of delivery in minutes. I have seen ads like "if you can think it, you can buy it". In other words, someone is carrying out the necessary tasks that we need to live, efficiently and quickly. In order to promote this, they are depending on our laziness or self-indulgence. Doesn't it sound a bit strange to you. Even if this is a marketing strategy and not ill intentioned, that slogan is literally created to tell you to sit like a potato. Of course not everything has to be done physically in today's digital world. But this logic doesn't stop there.
I don't know the situation in other countries but in Turkey, they are trying to dominate the concepts like neighbourhood markets or butchers. These small businesses are able to sell over internet with some sort of commission cut or some monthly fee. This is an effort to inject a hidden and modified capitalism into the economical system. It is domination rather than expansion. Because after a certain point, these apps monopolizes too much and it becomes pointless to try to compete against them. Also, we are not trying to help these small businesses by physically going there and shopping. They just can't be an alternative to enterprises because of our self-indulgence. They bow to these companies. And the big companies mention they are also helping out the small businesses in their ads.
These companies became pioneers in software engineering field too and they can pay higher salaries. Also they have opportunity to use new technologies, therefore they are more attractive in this community. In the end, the big companies are swallowing the small ones. These small ones are the actual ones who can produce added values to country.
Another important concept that we are missing here is the communication. Our communication habits like brainstorming with the salesman in the shop or coming across neighbours in markets or stores, having chit-chat with local businesses are mostly dead. Just like i have mentioned in my Clubhouse and Facebook posts, the services became habits and they have killed our speaking abilities. We can't even properly talk to the couriers, since they have a delivery timeline they have to follow. And we can talk about the protests and strikes from here.
1 year ago, people were talking about Getir by mentioning huge amounts of money. They have missed the monopolization there. The economical crisis has become visible as of January in Turkey. That is why the couriers working for these companies or cargo companies started protesting. The self-workers who has their own vehicle and carrying the goods for Getir, Trendyol, Banabi, Yemeksepeti and Hepsiburada complained about their salary increases and working conditions. Some of them tried to get the worker status, with insurance or pension and such, or wanted unionised rights. I am not here to take a side here.
There is a business model became very popular with the pandemic. It is called sub-contractor. This model enables the companies to have loose connections with workers and have more service based relations and options. I have heard there are already problems with this model around the world, since these companies can dictate harsh conditions. But this issue became loud and clear in Turkey due to serious economical downfall. If you search "courier protests" in google, you will see mostly Turkish news. If these companies were ill-intentioned, they could have made everything a lot harder. They could have been backed by political forces too. This situation is partially fuelled by our behaviour and effected our own lives. We have given power to those who provide comfort and ease, because we demanded it. That is why i think we should think about us more than the companies.
We are cheering and caring for the number fetishism, instead of success. We are listening the advices on success from millionares. We are fuelling capitalism even if we are against it. We think the domination and monopolization goals are reasonable, instead of expansion. We are marketing services or products to enslave, rather than creating opportunity. You can literally see the description of the mobile games: Addictive and fun and ...etc.
I have thought about writing a blog post with the title "Is being invested equals success?" back in the days. I have seen thing could to problematic and i won't be humble about this :) Nowadays, when we talk about entrepreneurship, we are talking about huge loads of money and strategies based on assimilating the small and mid players and markets. Work ethics and quality is not even a subject. Doing something for the greater good is long gone. But we hear a lot of maximizing profits. The bad thing is, we are supporting these ideas and considering them as examples or guides. Entrepreneur young generation is talking about money and markets and shares and the sizes of the companies. Maybe you need to stop at some point. Maybe not all companies should become giants. This is not capitalism, this is just plan and simple greed. This is an understanding.
I have mentioned this time to time in my blog. Humankind is enslaving or destroying itself with the concepts it create. I am sure you can find lots of examples of this throughout the history. The trouble today is these concepts grow a lot faster now and disinformation is everywhere to make norms out of mistakes. I sometimes say comfort is danger. Because we have a service sector not to make you comfortable, but to make to dependant. We have seen the same when Facebook went out.
We are and will be using these apps and services. We will conform to these digital world and change our lifestyles at some level inevitably. But don't forget that there are sociology (+ manipulation) behind these giants. Don't forget that you are contributing to habits and models that shapes the future. Don't forget that money begets money but that money is partially your money. Don't forget that you are merely fish baits in the world where big fish eats the small ones. Don't forget to visit my blog once in a while :) See you at the next post :)
Hümeyra
Çok güzel👍🤗