A company’s closing usually means sad news for the employees, however not in the case of Yemeksepeti.com- the Turkish food tech firm, that got acquired by German food giant, Delivery Hero in May for $590 million.
“We have shared $27 million of the money we earned with our 114 employees,” Yemeksepeti CEO Nevzat Aydın told Turkish daily Hürriyet. That’s INR 141 crores divided into 114 employees! (1.24 crore per employee!)
“We did this because if there is a success, we have accomplished it altogether,” the CEO added.
Yemeksepeti CEO Aydın remained in his post, as he also became part of the management team of Delivery Hero. Yemeksepeti — Turkish for “food cart” — is Delivery Hero’s first move into Turkey, and the deal is groundbreaking in another respect: the company claims it is the largest-ever acquisition in the food-ordering sector.
“Some employees cried, some screamed, some wrote letters of thanks,” he said. “There were emotions, because you affect the lives of the people. People can buy homes, cars. They can immediately do something otherwise they could not with monthly wages of 3,000-5,000 Turkish Liras. It was a good thing; I wish we could have given them more.”
Aydın said the deal, which was the biggest acquisition of a Turkish technology firm, was the result of “patience.”
“If we had waited another year, the number would have been higher,” he said. “The $589 million paid is big, but what matters is to be able to reject offers of $300 million, $500 million, to wait for the right price. You must know to say ‘no,’ you should not be afraid. The offer came up from $3 million to $589 million in 15 years.”
Ayrdıon said Yemeksepeti.com was an example of how the right idea roots among the Turkish people, even though it is a new one.
“Many people said ‘are you crazy?’ when we started the company in 2000 with an investment of $80,000,” he said. “But when you offer the Turkish people the right product in the right way, they adapt to changes. Now we get over 100,000 orders a day and make over 3 million transactions a month.”
The wave of making employees happy and rewarding their contributions generously seem to be a global occurence. Just a few months ago, we’d reported about the Chinese firm’s CEO who had made a world record by taking 6300 employees of his firm on a fully sponsored vacation to France, to celebrate the companty’s success. In another news, British business tycoon and Virgin group head Sir Richard Branson had announced unlimited holidays and a year of paid paternity leaves for employees.
This move by the Turkish CEO may also be reminscient of a similar announcement by the then-Housing CEO, Rahul Yadav to distribute his shares to the tune of 68 crores among his employees.
May the tribe of cash-dispensing, employee-rewarding CEOs increase!