Sabancı University Integrated Manufacturing Research and Application Center (SU-IMC) Integrated Manufacturing Webinar Series continues with Yiğit Karpats "Model based investigation of cutting tool-workpiece interactions during machining of CFRPs" seminar.

Please click to register webinar. 

Sabancı University Integrated Manufacturing Research and Application Center (SU-IMC) organizes series of thematic seminars/webinars at different levels of academia and industry to understand and prioritize the recent institutional, organizational and technical developments for the Composite Structures. 

SU-IMC Thematic Webinar Series program

The 8th Women Directors in Turkey Conference organized by Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum was held online this year on Thursday, November 19, 2020 with the support of Akbank, IFC, Limak Investment and Zorlu Holding. The conference under the theme of 'An Inclusive and Equitable Future' was held with the participation of experts in this field and shared the results of the 2020 Women on Board in Turkey Report.

According to the report results:

• In 2020, the proportion of women on BIST Boards increased from 15.9% to 17%, and the number of female directors increased by 5.3%.
• The rate of women among independent board members in BIST 100 companies, continuing its increase from 2019, increased from 17.7% to 20.2% in 2020.
• While only 37 BIST companies’ Boards of Directors were women, the ratio of female CEOs remained at 2.5%.

The 8th Women Directors in Turkey Conference, organized by Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum, was held online this year on Thursday, November 19, 2020. Held with the support of Akbank, IFC, Limak Investments and Zorlu Holding, the theme of the conference this year was “An Inclusive and Equitable Future”.

The keynote speaker of the conference Head of the IMF Strategy, Policy and Review Department, Ceyla Pazarbaşıoğlu drew attention to the pandemic having increased the inequality between genders and said: “The global average female labor force participation in 2019 was about 20 percentage points lower than males.  The Covid-19 crisis is likely to exacerbate gender inequality. For instance, women are more likely to work in face-to-face jobs that have been more acutely affected by social distancing measures. In the United States, about 54 percent of women working in social sectors cannot telework. In Brazil, it is 67 percent. In low-income countries, it is more than 88 percent who cannot telework. Women also bear the brunt of family care responsibilities. among parents with at least one child under the age of 6, men were roughly three times more likely to have returned to work than women. So far, only 41 percent of countries have introduced measures to protect women’s economic security in the face of the pandemic. But some countries have moved quickly. Austria, Italy, Portugal, and Slovenia have introduced a statutory right to (partially) paid leave for parents with children below a certain age, and France has expanded sick leave to parents impacted by school closures if no alternative care or work arrangements can be found. These policies are not only crucial to lift constraints on women’s economic empowerment, they are necessary to promote an inclusive post-COVID-19 recovery. While things may at times seem daunting, the pandemic also presents the greatest opportunity of our lifetime to usher in an inclusive and equitable future. "

Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum Director Melsa Ararat said in her speech: “Participatory economic decision-making mechanisms ensure gender balance in decision-making bodies paves the way for decisions to be equitable, fair and inclusive. If policy makers in Turkey are not more determined about women’s representation both politically, and in government controlled or private companies, the gap between the European Union and other developed countries and Turkey will further increase. It is essential for companies, before they are caught in quotas that will force sudden changes, to set targets for the representation of women in decision-making mechanisms, develop policies and report on them, both for the future of companies and for the economy of the country.

The “2020 Women on Board in Turkey Report” was also shared at the conference. 

The number of women in Boards of Directors continues to increase steadily.

According to the results of the  “2020 Women on Board in Turkey Report”, in 2020, the proportion of women in BIST Board of Directors increased from 15.9% to 17%, and the number of women members increased by 5.3%. In BIST-100 companies, the ratio of women in the boards of directors increased from 13.7% in 2019 to 15.6%. In 2020, the rate of female board members in 30% Club companies reached 20%.

The major focus of the 30% Club campaign in increasing the female ratio among independent board members in Turkey BIST 100 companies reported an increase from 17.7% to 20.2%, positively continuing the upward trend in 2019. The report also shows that 116 companies have achieved the minimum rate of women members recommended by the Capital Market Board (CMB) of 25%, but this constitutes only 29% of all companies.

With 41 companies with at least 3 women members constituting only 10.3% of all companies, it can be observed that 356 companies have still not yet been able to achieve effective gender diversity in their decision-making mechanisms.

134 companies among all BIST companies, and 25 companies in the BIST-100, are still managed by all-male boards. Of all BIST companies, there are only 37 women chairpersons and only 14 female CEOs are on the boards of directors. 

Slow but positive change in the number of boards with at least one female member

In 2020, the boards of 134 of the 397 companies consist of only men. This number corresponds to 33% of all companies. From 2012 to 2020, the ratio of companies with at least one female member on the boards of directors has slowly but positively changed, as in 2019, and the ratio of companies with all male boards in 2020 has decreased to 33.8%.

In 2020, an increase in the ratio of female members both among the total members of the board of directors and among the independent board members can be observed. The ratio of women among the independent board members, on the other hand, has exceeded the ratio of women in total and reached 18.5%.

In 2020, we see that 42% of 458 women are from families that are company controlling shareholders. The 265 women who have broken the glass ceiling and were elected to the board of directors constitute only 9.8% of the board memberships of BIST companies

Companies with the highest score have been announced

In the conference, two separate panels were held, and the awards of the Women Empowered Board” were conferred on their recipients. The companies with the highest 3 scores on the  “Women Empowered Boards of Directors Index” developed by Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum academicians, and which have at least 2 female professional board members in the BIST 100, are respectively:  Aksa Akrilik Kimya (also a member of the 30% Club), Koç Holding and Tekfen Holding. The company that reached parity in the Board of Directors index and received the highest score in the Star Market index was Türk Prysmian Kablo ve Sistemleri.

Moderated by Murat Yeşildere, Senior Partner of Egon Zehnder, the panel titled "Examples from the World in Diversity on Boards" was held with the participation of the 30% Club Steering Committee and the UK House of Lords Member Mary Goudie and Catalyst President and CEO Lorraine Hariton.

Moderated by Turkish Economic Social Studies Foundation Research Director Itır Akdoğan, the panel titled “The Direction of Future Research on Gender Diversity in Boards of Directors and Senior Management” was attended by the Professor of Finance at WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, Burçin Yurtoğlu, Head of the Department of Finance at London School of Economics and Professor Daniel Ferreira and Said Business School University of Oxford Finance Professor Renee Adams.

To celebrate the 20th year of our university, we have prepared a set of four questions to ask faculty and administrative personnel who have been with us since the beginning, and to our first students. They all tell "the story of 20 years" from their own perspectives.

Going in alphabetical order, this week's interviewee for "The Story of 20 Years" is Tülay Artan.

Tülay Artan has been a member of the Sabancı University family since 5 July 1999. She has been working as a faculty member at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), Sabancı University for 21 years.

Tülay Artan’s answers to our four questions are below.

What was your initial memory / impression of when you met Sabancı University for the first time?

T.A: In our first year, when we temporarily settled in the Information Center after Minerva Han, our days were spent with many long meetings. With the responsibility of building a university, a faculty, and master's and doctoral programs, I cannot forget many moments from the days spent literally “under one roof” (on the second floor of the Information Center). It was a perfect environment for us academicians to get to know each other, and you can say that we continued with these memories the following years. 

Our students, especially undergraduates, whom we met in the first year, really adopted the principle of “creating and developing together”. It is an achievement of the founding spirit of Sabancı University that there are some of those among that group whose youth days I still remember very vividly, and some of whom I still communicate with, and some whom were our graduate students and are now colleagues. 

I have to say that my most important gain from the first term is to know a one of a kind Rector like Tosun Terzioğlu; to work with him, to trust him, and to feel that he trusts us. 

Among the things I cannot forget is, every day in the first year(s), I mean every day, I would start having this unbearable feeling of hunger as soon as I stepped on the campus, and I would constantly complain that there was no way to suppress this hunger; it must have been the pressure of deprivation caused by the university environment. 

What are the differences between yourself 20 years ago and yourself today, and how did Sabancı University contribute to that change?

T.A: 20 years ago, as a social scientist in Turkey, my desire to do the best with the opportunities that Sabancı University offered us was very strong. Under the conditions of our country, we have been able to do the best for a long time. I consider it a great privilege to be part of the great experience of Sabancı University History Program from day one. 

First of all, we have been able to experience the privilege of being proud of our students. Sharing the principle of “creating and developing together” in the History Program has led to many valuable friendships. Perhaps it is these friendships that make the Sabancı University experience most valuable to me. In addition, we have had a lot of fun together. On the other hand, as a researcher working in a field that is not jurnalistic and sensational and takes a very long time to master, I must say that it is a privilege to find the opportunity to conduct research under such efficient conditions at Sabancı University, which are not easy to find in other places.

What comes into your mind when you think of Sabancı University in 20 years? What are your dreams for Sabancı University for the next 20 years? What about yourself?

T.A: 20 years later, what come to my mind when I think about Sabancı University is a reputable institution in Applied Sciences, no matter what the targeted framework is (World-Asia-Turkey?). Unfortunately, I cannot predict 20 years from now. Of course, I am planing to continue my projects and complete my books. 

Where and how would you be now if your paths hadn't crossed with Sabancı University?

T.A: I would be back in the US. 

To celebrate the 20th year of our university, we have prepared a set of four questions to ask faculty and administrative personnel who have been with us since the beginning, and to our first students. They all tell "the story of 20 years" from their own perspectives.

Going in alphabetical order, this week's interviewee for "The Story of 20 Years" is  Selim Birsel.

Selim Birsel has been a member of the Sabancı University family since 4 January 1999. He has been working as a faculty member at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), Sabancı University for 21 years. 

Selim Birsel’s answers to our four questions are below.

What was your initial memory / impression of when you met Sabancı University for the first time?

S.B: When I first started working at Sabancı University, the entire university was located in our Minerva Han building in Karaköy, each floor was allocated to a faculty. The first meeting I attended was a university meeting organized by our Rector Mr. (Tosun) Terzioğlu after New Year, and all of us could fit in a meeting room. We were just a bunch of people. In 1999, we were working for a university that would open that year, it was not just a plan anymore.    

What are the differences between yourself 20 years ago and yourself today, and how did Sabancı University contribute to that change?

S.B: 20 years ago, I was younger, of course. I also remember being inexperienced in some areas. In the following years, I have gained experience in many areas and had the opportunity to realize some of my dreams. 

What comes into your mind when you think of Sabancı University in 20 years? What are your dreams for Sabancı University for the next 20 years? What about yourself?

S.B: High-quality and responsible individuals who can think for themselves. I dream of a university that can serve as an example in the world and be among the first preferences of those who pursue a higher education. 20 years from now, I will not be working at the university anymore. I think I can imagine that I will be somewhere in the field, where I can do my research, my art, which gives me peace of mind, maybe I can fish sometimes.   

Where and how would you be now if your paths hadn't crossed with Sabancı University?

S.B: It is very difficult for me to answer that question. 

I think I would rather look ahead and forward than think about my life in the past.  

To celebrate the 20th year of our university, we have prepared a set of four questions to ask faculty and administrative personnel who have been with us since the beginning, and to our first students. They all tell "the story of 20 years" from their own perspectives.

Going in alphabetical order, this week's interviewee for "The Story of 20 Years" is Salih Arıman.

Salih Arıman has been a member of the Sabancı University family since 1 February 1999. Salih Arıman, who has been working at Sabancı University for 21 years, started his carrier at the university as the Management Support Coordinator and has been the Director of Institutional Development since 2000.   

Salih Arıman’s answers to our four questions are below.

What was your initial memory / impression of when you met Sabancı University for the first time?

S.A: In November 1998, when I was serving as a Quality Coordinator a textile company in Central Anatolia, I ran into Mrs. Münire Arıkol at the Quality Congress organized annually by the Quality Association together with TÜSİAD. I had met her before when she was working as the IBM’s Training Director and she later retired from Sabancı University’s BAGEM Directorship. As we were chatting, in response to my classic question of “What is going on in your life?”, she said, “We're building a university; we have a position for you, would you consider it?” It was a very attractive offer for me, even in that form, as I was already thinking about a career change at the time and wanted to move from the manufacturing industry to the services industry. I said “Yes, I would.”, without even asking questions like “What university?” or “What kind of position?” I think the respect and trust that I had for Mrs. Arıkol coincided with my search for a new job, all the pieces suddenly fell into place, and the word “Yes” spilled out of my mouth... I guess that is exactly how fate works… 

What are the differences between yourself 20 years ago and yourself today, and how did Sabancı University contribute to that change?

S.A: I lost my father 20 years ago, that is, in 1999. I had a significant career change and we had a big earthquake disaster.. These three events happened in a row, which very naturally changed my view of life. Instead of looking at everything in a very idealistic way and making very sharp decisions, it made me look at things holistically and focus on what creates value. Two very important people who allowed me to achieve this were Mr. (Tosun) Terzioğlu and Mr. (Hüsnü) Paçacıoğlu. May they rest in peace. But another 20 years have passed since these events, and being part of the team that has implemented almost every innovation in our institution has given me a lot of experience and happiness. Over the years, one learns to digest these experiences, use them more effectively. I have also realized the value of my teammates. Especially from our second Secretary General Haluk Bal, I learned that being human-centered is much more useful than being business-centered. 

What comes into your mind when you think of Sabancı University in 20 years? What are your dreams for Sabancı University for the next 20 years? What about yourself?

S.A: The year 2040... Sabancı University becomes the first university in Turkey to become one of the top universities in the world in THE rankings... Our graduates creates great change in the world; two of our graduates receives the Nobel Prize... A group of our faculty members working on material technology develop suitable materials for internal and external surfaces of spacecraft... We are a reference point in the world in the field of data analytics and cyber security... We have programs in areas such as urban life and product design... After my eldest daughter, my younger daughter gives me a granddaughter as well... My dream is that they are Sabancı students like their mother… 

Where and how would you be now if your paths hadn't crossed with Sabancı University?

S.A: Who knows? I would probably still be somewhere in the services industry, because that was my goal. Fortunately for me, I encountered a high-level service institution. I am really happy about that. I have met you and improved myself for the better.

Sabancı University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences (FENS) started a new seminar series titled “Sharing Experiences”.

In this new series, faculty members will share their experiences and know-how on certain important academic endeavors with their peers. Aiming for a highly interactive get-together, the series will be a new and exciting opportunity to create an atmosphere where ‘faculty learn from each other’. 

Sharing Experiences Series started with FENS Member Kamer Kaya’s seminar titled ‘High Performance Computing Center of Turkey’ on November 25^th, 2020.

In this session, Kamer Kaya talked about his experiences during grant applications and provided many important information and valuable tips to other faculty members who are going through the same processes.

The series will continue with FENS Member Erhan Budak’s talk on December 23^rd, 2020 titled ‘A Short Story of Manufacturing Research Lab’ where he will relate his valuable experience on the long and difficult process of building his own lab.

Sharing Experiences Series will continue through the 2020-2021 academic year with many other faculty members and exciting topics that will surely inspire all. Stay tuned…

SU Gender continues its international webinar series on sexual harassment, gender based violence, diversity and inclusion within and outside the university. In the series, the experts, researchers, and activists from different universities, research centers and NGOs share their experiences.

SU Gender continues its international webinar series on sexual harassment, gender based violence, diversity and inclusion within and outside the university. In the series, the experts, researchers, and activists from different universities, research centers and NGOs share their experiences.

The ninth of the webinar series will take place on December 16. You are welcome to join our webinar by registering via the link below.

December 16, Wednesday 18.00, UTC+3

Struggling With Sexual Harassment and Assault in Turkey: The Case of Universities and Civil Society / Umut Beşpınar, Yıldız Ecevit, Hilal Esmer, Ufuk Sezgin, Gülriz Uygur

Please click here for registration.

*There will be simultaneous translation during the event.

Our graduate Arda Ertem's entrepreneurship story begins in Sweden, where he went for his master's studies. After graduating from the Faculty of Management Sciences in 2008, Ertem's path to Sweden for a master's degree in Management crossed with Ece Kural and Furkan Bayraktar, developers of the Scrintal idea. The team was completed when Yusuf Karataş, a student at the Economics Program of Sabancı University, started working at Scrintal 4 months ago.   

Using speech-to-text technology, Scrintal provides audio and video decoding services in 16 different languages. Arda Erdem explains his goals for Scrintal, which also offers opportunities such as text editing, interview analysis, and qualitative data analysis as follows: “The main part of the job that creates value is not to give the data as it is, but to interpret it and make it into meaningful information. At the heart of our growth goal is this conversion.”

We talked with Arda Ertem about his start up story.   

Can we get to know you and Yusuf briefly as two members of the Sabancı family at Scrintal?

Arda Ertem: I graduated from the Faculty of Management Sciences in 2008. Two years after graduation, I was accepted into the master's program in Management at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden.

After graduating in 2012, I got a job at a small start up based in Stockholm, and I also earned a residence permit that would allow me to stay in Sweden. After that, I worked on Business Development at a global employer brand consulting company called Universum for more than 5 years, I was responsible for Turkey and the Middle East region (Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt). I can say that I reaped the fruits of the responsibility that this adventure had placed on me at a young age in my later works.

After Universum, I had a brief but quite successful experience at Naty, which operates in the fast consumer goods industry. In this process, I worked especially in charge of the European region. Then I worked for a year as a business development director of Intellego Technologies, a start up. In this period, especially due to the highly developed start up ecosystem in Stockholm, my desire to work on my own business began to grow.

I heard about a project that my programmer friend Furkan, whom I constantly asked for advice, was working on with another Turkish friend, and I quite liked the idea. In May 2020, I joined the company as the third co-founder, and in July 2020, we launched the first version of the platform.

Yusuf Karataş: I am a senior student at the Economics Program of Sabancı University. I gained experience working at Sabancı University's Advertising and Marketing Office and various small businesses. I started working at Scrintal as part of Sabancı University's special online internship project this year. After the end of my compulsory internship, I had the opportunity to continue at Scrintal. We have been working together for about 4 months to develop Scrintal.

How was the idea of Scrintal conceived?

Arda Ertem: Ece, one of the co-founders, is currently doing her PhD on climate change at Stockholm University. The difficulties that she experienced in deciphering around 50 interviews she conducted as part of her doctoral dissertation encouraged her to come up with a solution to this problem, and in 2018, she and Furkan came up with the idea of Scrintal.

So far, we have received two grants worth SEK 300,000 from Vinnova, Sweden's Innovation Agency, and SEK 33,000 from Almi, one of Sweden's most important start ups. We have dedicated some of these funds to understanding the workflow and needs of potential users, and in this context, we have conducted interviews with approximately 100 users.

Scrintal basically delivers speech-to-text technology to end users. The server infrastructure, which we have developed with our internal resources, turns audio and video files into text using the services provided by Amazon and Google. The web interface, which we have developed with our internal resources as well, helps our users upload, store, and turn audio and video files into text using our server infrastructure. With our web-based text editor and integrated analysis tools, we can easily edit and analyze the text obtained by users.

Speech-to-text technology is actually not a new phenomenon; it is a subject where companies such as Google and Amazon have been seriously working on and allocating resources over the past few years. For this reason, the rate of accurate conversion of spoken words to text has improved significantly over the past few years. For example, you can now turn a high-quality audio recording into text with 97% accuracy, but since the rate of accuracy depends on various factors such as the clarity of the voice recording, noise in the background, speaker’s proximity to the microphone, each user's experience can be quite different.

There are already dozens of different areas where speech-to-text technology can be used. Researchers, journalists, lecturers, podcast creators, libraries, call centers, and many similar institutions want to turn audio or video recordings into text, access data that they currently cannot use, and get valuable insights by interpreting this data correctly. As Scrintal, we have identified our target group as researchers at the first stage. We continue to add features to our platform that will meet their needs. However, in this process, we continue to conduct needs analysis with other user groups.

You provide deciphering services in 16 different languages. How do you carry out the development process for different languages?

Arda Ertem: Thanks to Scrintal's flexible code infrastructure, this process can be performed very easily when we want to add a new language. But the criterion that matters to us is the quality of the language that will be deciphered, rather than the amount. The languages we already turn into text are those with a certain deciphering accuracy rate. There have been languages that we removed from our list because we were not happy with the performance. On the other hand, we support more than one accent in English and Spanish, the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Scrintal works as follows: It turns the first draft of any audio or video recording uploaded to the platform within minutes. The extent to which this draft needs correction is entirely proportional to the quality of the audio recording and the intelligibility of the sounds. Users complete the correction process either on their own or as a team. They can mark points they consider important in different colors and add notes. When they finish the process, they download the final version of the file to their computer in the format they want.

Assuming that an average of 4-6 hours are spent deciphering an hour-long interview, the most important value we offer to users is reducing this time by at least 50%, thereby maximizing efficiency. When you consider that there have been dozens of interviews as part of a project, we save them dozens of days they would otherwise lose.

Finally, last month, we have started implementing a new service, especially for our customers who do not have time to decipher. For an additional fee, we can also correct deciphering for our customers who do not have time or only request a close-to-perfect output. This way, they do not have to do anything.

Can you tell us about Scrintal's growth goals? 

Arda Ertem: Our vision as Scrintal is to become a single platform that researchers can use throughout all research processes. We aim to transform the product from being just a deciphering platform to a structure where users can perform the analysis they really need. The main part of the job that creates value is not to give the data as it is, but to interpret it and make it into meaningful information. At the heart of our growth goal is this conversion. We are aware that otherwise, as a platform that only does speech-to-text, we will not be able to meaningfully differentiate from our competitors.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we can also see that the way they conduct research and give lectures has changed. In particular, as a team, we believe that the effectiveness of cloud-based platforms, where researchers can decipher and analyze their interviews more quickly and synchronously and access this data from anywhere, will increase in the coming years.

In addition, due to the shift to digital education as a result of the the pandemic, we are seriously considering certain solutions as part of our growth plan which will increase the learning efficiency of students in the remote education process and make it easier for students with disabilities or learning disorders to understand video course contents.

It is a pleasure for us to have two members of the Sabancı family in the project. What did being a graduate or student of Sabancı University add to you in terms of working at a start up and gaining an entrepreneurial vision?

Arda Ertem: Thank you very much for your kind words. The most important role that Sabancı University played in my life is that it accelerated the process of going abroad thanks to its vision, as well as the motivation that it gives you and what I learned there. Even after graduation, my connection with Sabancı University was never severed. While working at Universum, we had the opportunity to collaborate within the framework of a 3-year Erasmus+ project under the coordination of Şule Yalçın from the Career Office and her team.

I can say that my vision of entrepreneurship has gained a different dimension, especially in 2019. The most important factor here is not the strong start up ecosystem in Stockholm, but rather the assessments I personally made about what I enjoyed in life and how I wanted to live. As a result of this assessment, I realized that I did not want to continue my career in a corporate structure unless I had to, and I wanted to create something new from scratch, and I decided to take a risk to this end.

“In this context, I think Sabancı University gives a much freer and more questioning vision to young people. When I look back and look at the diversity of courses I have taken, I can easily observe the impact that this wealth of options has had on me.

Yusuf Karataş: For me, one of the factors that makes Sabancı University the most special is the interdisciplinary course selection mechanism that it offers to its students, regardless of their field. Especially when it comes to entrepreneurship and small business management, you need to have some knowledge in many different areas. When your manpower is also limited, it is very important that you have a general understanding of the functioning of issues related to different departments or outside your field. Thanks to the freedom to access information provided by Sabancı University to its students, you have a comprehensive understanding of business management, whether in entrepreneurship or other areas. All you have to do is take an interest in entrepreneurship, and then you can already benefit from the opportunities offered by Sabancı University and its student-friendly approach to education.

“In the Scrintal adventure, of course, we can see a lot of the reflections of this knowledge made possible by being a member of the Sabancı family.

Established in 2006 to support entrepreneurship in the Sabancı University ecosystem and to bring innovative ideas from within and outside the university to the business world, Sabancı University Inovent has led the implementation and growth of 39 start ups so far. One of these start ups, Appcent offers mobile solutions to companies mainly in the e-commerce and banking industries in different areas such as application development.

Appcent was founded in 2013 with the support of TÜBİTAK 1512. Ozan Uysal, founder of the company, says: “Inovent introduced us to various companies with which it is connected and helped us get to know the industry. It also helped us open an office in Technopark, which gave us a competitive advantage.”

We talked with Uysal about Appcent's entrepreneurial journey.

First of all, can you talk a little bit about yourself and how the idea of the start up was conceived? 

I am a ITU Electronics Engineering graduate. I completed my master's degree in Computer Engineering at Sabancı University. After that, I completed my PhD studies in Marketing at Bilgi University and in Computer Engineering at Doğuş University. After working as an engineer in large companies for 6 years, I quit while working at Turkcell on mobile internet in 2012 to start my own company, realizing the gap in this industry. With the support of Tübitak 1512, I founded my own start up, Appcent.

How did you meet Inovent? 

After receiving Tübitak 1512 funding, I contacted Sabancı University and sought support for my project idea. Inovent liked my idea and decided to support it. We started to reach out to companies in the industry from office in GOSB Technopark.

What were the points where you needed support as a start up? At what points did Inovent meet this need?

Initially, Inovent introduced us to various companies with which it is connected and helped us get to know the industry. It also helped us open an office in Technopark, which gave us a competitive advantage. Additionally, it helped us become familiar with different ecosystems through network meetings it organized abroad.

Can you tell us about your current activities? What kind of service does Appcent offer in which countries?

As Appcent, we have acted as a mobile solution partner for many leading companies, especially in the retail and e-commerce industries, since our establishment. Today, we mainly provide support to our customers in the e-commerce and banking industries in the field of mobile application development and mobile solutions. In addition to Turkey, we also serve large customers in Kuwait. Our plan is to improve our services in the MENA region.

What are your recommendations for start ups like yours? What did you do right? What do you think is the roadmap that can bring success for start ups in Turkey?

First of all, do a good market research and make sure that there is a need. If you cannot identify the need correctly, or if customer expectations are shifting in a different direction, do not hesitate to pivot. That means not falling in love with your idea. You also have to build your team well and allocate responsibilities from the very beginning when partnering.

Can you talk about Appcent's future goals?

Appcent has been a rapidly growing company since its foundation and in this sense, we have become one of the largest companies in the industry. Recently, we have established Appcent Academy to train new mobile application developers in Turkey. Our goal for the future is to become an international company that serves our customers on a wide scale, not only in terms of mobile, but also in terms of software in general. Today, we are planting the seeds of this with 360-degree solutions that we have developed for some of our customers.

Erkan Akın, who graduated from our Computer Engineering department in 2005, told the foundation story of his start up BeVideo to Start Up magazine. We are share it with you...