Papyon

What did it do?

Papyon was a restaurant discovery and booking site launched in January 2013 by Yemeksepeti, Turkey's leading online food delivery company. Users could filter by cuisine and neighbourhood, browse menus, reviews and ratings, and book tables online. It operated in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya and Bodrum.

Why did it shut down?

In January 2017 Papyon posted a short farewell message to its users and gave no reason for the closure. The closure looked like a continuation of the process that began with the shutting of Lokum.com and irmik.com after Yemeksepeti joined Delivery Hero in 2015. Webrazzi had interpreted the closure of irmik.com as a decision in line with Delivery Hero's strategies. Papyon handled more than 30,000 bookings in four years; compared with the scale of food ordering, the figure was small. One interpretation is that booking contributed nothing to the parent company's core delivery business and therefore lost priority.

The story

When Yemeksepeti, Turkey's leading online food delivery company, raised $44 million from General Atlantic at the end of 2012, it had more than a growing delivery business: it also had an appetite to move into new areas. Its third spin-off brand, after Lokum.com and irmik.com, Papyon went live on 18 January 2013. The idea was this: a company that had brought restaurants online for food ordering could also guide people who wanted to sit down at a table.

According to Webrazzi's launch report, Papyon started on day one with more than 600 select venues in Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya and Bodrum. Users could filter restaurants by cuisine and neighbourhood, look at menus and reviews, and book a table. A content partnership was struck with food writer Mehmet Yaşin, tools for group bookings were added, and an iOS app was released in 2014.

But Yemeksepeti's world changed in 2015. The company joined Delivery Hero, and the side ventures began to close one by one. First Lokum.com, then irmik.com ceased operations. Webrazzi had interpreted the closure of irmik.com as a decision in line with Delivery Hero's strategies.

Papyon's turn came in January 2017. In a farewell message reported by egirişim, Papyon noted that it had handled more than 30,000 bookings and thanked its partner restaurants and users. No reason was given for the closure. In June 2017 Hürriyet also listed Papyon alongside Bukoli and Markafoni in its feature on failed start-ups.

Papyon's story shows that the fate of ventures born under a corporate umbrella often depends less on their own performance than on the parent company's priorities. Thirty thousand bookings in four years was a small number for a company that was already processing more than 60,000 orders a day in 2013. With the new owner's decision to focus on the core business, the booking business found no place in Yemeksepeti's portfolio.

Lessons for founders

• A venture inside a big company is among the first to be sacrificed when the parent's strategy changes; make its link to the core business clear.
• Success in one category does not automatically carry over to a neighbouring one; booking a table and ordering food are different habits.
• Judge usage volume against the scale of the core business; a side product that stays small loses the battle for resources.

Sources

1. Yemeksepeti's venture Papyon closes (egirişim, 2017-01-20)
2. Another new venture from Yemeksepeti: Papyon.com (Webrazzi, 2013-01-18)
3. Why they failed (Hürriyet, 2017-06-12)
4. irmik.com, one of Yemeksepeti's ventures, also closes (Webrazzi, 2015-11-02)
5. iOS app released for Papyon.com, Yemeksepeti's online booking venture (Webrazzi, 2014-09-05)
6. Yemeksepeti's Ventures: İrmik, Papyon and Lokum (egirişim, 2013-09-14)

This section is compiled from public sources (Wikidata, news archives and company announcements). Figures are given as they appear in those sources; unknown fields are left blank. If you spot a mistake in an entry, you can send us a correction.

Is something in this entry wrong? Request a correction → Method