Despite a slight drop, investments in Turkey's entrepreneurial ecosystem have continued in the second quarter of 2018. According to the Turkish market intelligence and analytics platform, Startsups.Watch, 16 ventures secured investment deals for almost $8.5 million during this period. With the recent development, investments in the first half of this year reached around $27.5 million. At an event that brought entrepreneurs, investors and experts together at Istanbul's Kolektifhouse. At the event, the ventures and investors involved took the stage.

The decline in investments in the second quarter was influenced by the periodic investment rounds of global venture capital funds. The noteworthy investments of the second quarter went to "obilet" and "tapu.com." The investment agreements of the two ventures were effective in this regard.

Noteworthy ventures

In the second quarter event of the Startups.Watch, three ventures and their investors evaluated the agreement. Bizim Hesap, which solves small and medium-sized enterprises' (SME) pre-accounting transactions with cloud software, announced details of the investment received from Fibabanka's finance technology venture Finberg.

Companies' car sharing solution Carbon, on the other hand, revealed the reasons for the investment deal with Nexus Ventures. Kimola, which specialized in big data, by following the tracks left by customers in the digital environment, shared how they convinced 500 Istanbul.

2018: The Year of Breakouts

The breakouts of Trendyol and Gram Games in the second quarter of this year also made the first half of the year noteworthy. While Trendyol led the way with a valuation of $700 million, Gram Games succeeded in making the third largest breakout deal, worth $250 million. The fact that these ventures matured and found investors abroad became a ray of hope for the ecosystem.

VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENTS

According to Startups.Watch, corporate venture capital investments in the first half of this year reached $4.3 million, compared to $10.8 million in 2017. This year the number of companies heading for corporate venture capital is increasing. At the event, bank and financial institution executives discussed corporate venture capital investments.

İşbank Deputy General Manager Yalçın Sezen stressed that in today's competitive conditions, it is inevitable to work with ventures and act with their agility. "Our support for the Workup Enterprise Acceleration Program continues. We have opened up our APIs to software developers to enhance collaboration with ventures. These ventures will increase our working areas, enabling us to be more agile," he continued.

Yalçın Sezen also added that they will contribute significantly to the projects carried out by the state on the venture capital fund.

Fibabanka General Manager Ömer Mert said that its investment and financial technology venture Finberg generated a $50 million fund and made the initial investment in ventures like, "Garaj Sepeti" and "Bizim Hesap."

"We have to act with the entrepreneurial ecosystem to compete as a younger bank," Mert said.

Albaraka Türk Deputy General Manager Mustafa Çetin shared details of the venture acceleration program they established, pointing to the advantages of working with entrepreneurs.

New generation ventures

New generation ventures also took the stage at the event. Six ventures supported by the institutions had the opportunity to talk about their projects in detail.

The venture, that supports young people who are currently trying to find the answer to questions like "which university," "which department," confuses most of the young people, explained their project with the support of İş Bank Workup.

Reminis, which provides access to event photographs of people with face recognition technology, made a presentation with the support of Türk Telekom PILOT.

The other ventures were Techsign supported by Albaraka Türk, Sensgreen green energy solutions supported by Google, Alya 3D Printer solutions backed by Turkcell, and Twentify digital customer management, supported by Netaş.

TL 1M PILOT SUPPORT FOR NEW VENTURES

Türk Telekom PILOT, Turkey's first corporate venture acceleration program, has announced its sixth-term ventures. A total of 11 teams, selected from more than 600 applicants, will be offered the opportunity to evaluate the collaboration opportunities with Türk Telekom with cash support of TL 90,000 ($18,813) each.

The teams will also benefit from an office space in Istanbul and accommodation as well as mobile communication package facilities and Türk Telekom's strong technology infrastructure for 12 weeks. They will also be provided with introductory support in various media during and after the program.

Firat Yamanır, assistant general manager of Türk Telekom Strategy, Planning and Business Development, said that they aim to provide value-added services to customers by collaborating with innovative technology ventures, to create economic benefits for the country and sector by speeding up the ventures. He noted that they had difficulty choosing the right ventures.

Yamanır added that they significantly increased the amount of investment they made in ventures in the new period of the PILOT program, saying they will provide a total of TL 1 million in cash support to the ventures selected for the sixth period.

Support for 11 ventures

After an extensive evaluation, Akaunting, Botart, Gigbi, Glamy, Netbox, Octovan, Partymag, Playz, Pollective, Reminis and Ulak, were selected for the program.

The sixth term ventures of PILOT, which was realized by Turkey's leading information and communication technology company Türk Telekom in 2013 in order to support entrepreneurship in the country and to transform innovative ideas into value-added projects, were announced. The technology-focused 11 teams that develop applications in different areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, image processing and network solutions will be provided with the opportunity to evaluate collaboration opportunities with Turk Telekom along with TL 990,000 in cash support.

600 applications

Fırat Yamaner said that they received 600 applications for the sixth term of the program. "It was very difficult to choose between them," he said.

He added that they were extremely pleased to see such great interest in the program and the overall increase in the number of Turkish ventures.

He pointed out that all the ventures with innovative and value-added projects in the field of technology were valued and that they gave priority to education and health technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, the internet of things (IoT), cybersecurity and business solutions, adding that they significantly increased the amount of investment they made in the ventures in the new period under PILOT.

"We will provide TL 90,000 in cash support for each selected team, as well as office space, $100,000 worth cloud services, mobile communication packages and communication support for the promotion of their projects. As Türk Telekom, we will continue to support the entrepreneurs and the ecosystem with our technology, knowledge and connections through PILOT," Yamaner said.

Innovative projects

While evaluating the applications made to PILOT, which was highly popular during the new application period, features such as "innovativeness and applicability of the idea, size of the market, potential for growth, consistency of business model, minimum viable product's (MVP) potential for success and competency of team" were taken into account. After an extensive evaluation, Akaunting, Botart, Gigbi, Glamy, Netbox, Octovan, Partymag, Playz, Pollective, Reminis, Ulak were selected for the program.

DON'T LOSE SHOPPERS

Logo Ventures, founded in partnership with Logo Software and Actus Portfolio Management, to support ventures with high-growth potential made its latest investment - worth $500,000 - in the visitor analytics company V-Count. The company provides services for many brands such as Samsung, Samsonite, Sephora, Lego, Whirlpool and GAP with hardware that collects data in fields like as age, gender, emotion recognition, as well as human counting, queue analysis and intensity analysis, along with a cloud-based business intelligence platform transmitted as instantaneous analysis information.

V-Count became the second investment of Logo Ventures after Vispera, a technology company that works on image processing, image recognition, statistical learning and data mining technologies.

Increases value

Logo Ventures Managing Partner Cahit Güvensoy said they made their first two investments in retail analysis sector. "Logo Ventures wants to help ventures with technological depth in sectors like B2B, FinTech, and IoT. We can contribute to the increase in value as 'Smart Money' continues. Our next target is to support another venture by the end of the year," he said. V-Count was ranked ninth in this year's Corporate & Startup Day event, which identifies Turkey's Top 100 new generation companies. It exports its high technology product to more than 90 countries, including Mauritius, Ecuador, New Caledonia, Vietnam, Qatar, Mexico, Peru, Kenya and the U.S.

In May, V-Count opened its third overseas office in London, after Miami and Dubai.

GLOVO REMAINS FIRM ON GROWTH TARGET

It is very important for founders and investors that ventures do not lose sight of their growth target. Closing the C series with an investment of TL 115 million, Glovo is growing rapidly and is moving confidently towards becoming the most effective technology hub in Southern Europe.

Glovo has devoted its resources to optimizing the platform and providing the best service for drivers, users and partners. They plan to hire more than 100 new engineers for this purpose.

Uber's former Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East, Africa region SVP Niall Wass has recently become the chairman of Glovo's board of directors.

Wass's vast experience will make a major contribution to strengthening Globo's position in current markets and global growth.