Venture acceleration programs organized to increase the number of successful startups in Turkey ensure that many startups receive initial financing, cooperation and mentoring.

The eighth-period participants of Turkey's leading information and communication technologies company Türk Telekom’s PILOT venture acceleration program have been announced. The program was launched in 2013 to support entrepreneurship in Turkey and turn innovative ideas into added-value businesses. Accordingly, Türk Telekom will provide eight technology-oriented teams developing applications in different fields with total cash support of TL 1.2 million (around $170,000). Some of the startups have the opportunity to evaluate the supply chain for Türk Telekom's sales or service organizations.

350 jobs, TL 41M turnover

Türk Telekom Strategy, Planning and Digital Deputy General Manager Barış Karakullukçu underlined that Türk Telekom pioneered "innovation and entrepreneurship" with its investments in technology.

"Sixty-five startups have graduated from PILOT so far. We have provided over TL 4 million in cash support to the startups," Karakullukçu said. "The startups that we supported provided employment for 350 people last year and achieved a turnover of TL 41 million. We are very pleased to contribute to Turkey's economy with the support we provide to startups. In the new period, we have significantly increased the amount of investment we made in ventures within the scope of PILOT. In addition to the cash support of TL 150,000 to each team, we also provide strong mentor support. We want the startups we support to achieve global success," he added.

First acceleration program

The teams selected for the new period of PILOT, the first venture acceleration program conducted by the private sector in Turkey, will receive feedback from the Türk Telekom mentor network consisting of industry professionals and successful entrepreneurs and investors for 12 weeks to successfully implement their business ideas.

In this regard, startups that will take their ideas further will benefit from Türk Telekom's strong technology infrastructure, as well as facilities such as office space, cloud services and mobile communication support. Türk Telekom will also provide promotional support to the teams in various channels during and after the program.

Cryptocurrency analysis

CryptoIndexSeries is a cryptocurrency platform that allows individual and corporate users to analyze cryptocurrency data and to trade from their wallets in different exchanges with the advanced version CISTrader.

It collects and classifies cryptocurrency data from many sources. Using artificial intelligence (AI), it creates many indicators and reports such as indexes, news emotion analysis, sectoral content and technical features. Crypto data can be analyzed and made meaningful for the investor to make better decisions. In addition to this analysis, CISTrader allows the user to buy and sell from their wallets in different exchanges in one place, also offering its data and indicators to the fund managers, financial software companies and data providers through application programming interfaces (API).

Stroke detection with AI

Hevi AI is an early warning system that detects the presence of stroke with artificial intelligence in computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken with hStroke. Hevi AI automatically detects the presence of a stroke with 99% precision, sending a warning to the physician within one minute, speeds up the diagnosis of physicians and increases the chances of treatment for patients.

Cybersecurity for cloud infrastructure

PDAccess is a cybersecurity software that enables organizations to use their cloud infrastructures in a safe, agile and compatible way. It records all kinds of activities carried out in the cloud structure belonging to institutions, implements security policies and provides identity management.

Quality control with artificial intelligence

ProcessEye Studio is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) production and quality-control solution that enables manufacturing companies to develop artificial intelligence-based image processing systems.

With ProcessEye Studio, companies can improve their production processes, improve their quality control processes and integrate into their own systems without having any software and coding knowledge.

Internet mind for every object

Qubitro is a high-performance SaaS internet of things (IoT) platform that allows developers and organizations to gather smart solutions by collecting data from the device they want, without the need for infrastructure setup and coding.

It provides its users with support for monitoring, communication between devices and integration with different platforms. Institutions can also sell their own branded apps using Qubitro's APIs.

Cryptocurrency exchange solution

Resardis is a side chain-based decentralized cryptocurrency exchange solution that enables cryptocurrency traders to trade cryptocurrencies over the web.

It offers a cryptocurrency trading experience on a user-friendly platform with a technical-free front, secure with cryptocurrency investors with blockchain technology, as well as fast and scalable with the use of the side chain.

Tech monitoring of crime revenues

Sanction Scanner is a security and compliance solution that enables organizations to prevent their crime revenues through artificial intelligence and deep learning infrastructure in accordance with all world regulations.

With the Sanction Scanner, institutions can monitor crime revenues instantly and carry out their processes with terrorist financing and other related crimes in accordance with corporate policies and procedures. It can provide cost advantage with the licensing model, as well as quick and easy integration with the possibility of using web, batch and API.

Visual data can be stored while protecting privacy

Syntonym protects the privacy of individuals by anonymizing the data in the hands of institutions that process and store visual data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK).

It enables data to be processed, shared and used as artificial intelligence training data without the need for explicit consent. Syntonym preserves analytical metrics such as age, gender, head position and facial expressions, unlike traditional methods, by irreversibly replacing existing faces, which are biometric data in images and videos, with synthetic faces that never existed.

This anonymization without corruption improves the accuracy and reliability of artificial intelligence algorithms, as well as enables advanced data analysis.

Remote automatic thermometer developed

In the pandemic process, startups and academics in the technoparks have accomplished many inventions. At Yıldız Teknopark, an ergonomically sized thermometer that can take temperature remotely, keep a record of measurements and alert in case of anomaly has been developed.

The pandemic period led to the emergence of the gem in technoparks and academics. Many devices designed with their own means emerged in this process. Developed by associate professor Fatma Aydın Akgün from Yıldız Technical University and her students, when commercialized automatically, this thermometer will offer contactless temperature measurement from homes to public transport, from parks to factories, without the need for a person. Moreover, this measurement result will be sent to the desired device.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, temperature measurements are now made at all indoor entrances, usually using thermal cameras or devices measuring arm or forehead temperature. During the pandemic era, many different products such as clocks measuring fever and masks appeared.

System without thermal camera

Meanwhile, Akgün has developed a hand-held thermometer that can automatically take the temperature in a contactless manner without an ergonomic thermal camera.

She actually started this project in 2017. Akgün said that she wanted to design this product for mothers. "Many babies have a fever problem, and parents have a hard time, especially because of the risk of convulsion," she said.

"I was one of these mothers. I was a mother who never slept in the nights when her son had a fever, set her watch every 10 minutes so that she could not fall asleep, and moreover did not share this responsibility because she could not trust anyone. At that time, I searched for products that gave a warning without touching the body, but I could not find it either in Turkey or in the world. And that's how our story of product development started."

This thermometer, with machine learning in the background, IoT, artificial intelligence and some algorithms, gives importance to the comfort of the patient. With this product, which eliminates situations such as the movement of the patient or the wrong measurement of temperature by being affected by the hot and cold factors around, the body temperature of even people working in cold storage areas can be monitored.

With this product, which conveys the responsibility of the companion to the machine, the patient is introduced to the device when the patient's temperature is measured and controlled in a matter of seconds or even split seconds, and the warning is given to the people who are introduced to the device. Akgün will also establish an academic incubation company in Yıldız Teknopark's Yıldız Incubation Center in order to transform this invention into a product. With the support of the Yıldız Technology Transfer Office, Akgün said that after the establishment of the incubation company, YTU-owned patents decided to establish partnerships and would be licensed to new companies whose installation processes were in progress, and would receive financial, in-kind and technical support in the name of productization.

Individual-based tracking

Akgün said that this thermometer can be used effectively in the pandemic process. "Patients in quarantine will be able to be observed and warned, regardless of the city and building. In other words, the state will be able to observe both the hospital and quarantine patients from a single center," she continued. "In this way, it will be possible to eliminate the risk of contamination from health care personnel at the same time to control patients."

"If the prototype that we have begun to develop as the first product becomes final, it will be possible to follow up on non-sick people. In places with a card reader at the entrance, such as a plaza or technopark, it will be possible to follow all the people in the area with their IDs. Thus, the entrance of those with high temperatures will be prevented automatically with our system that we will integrate into the turnstiles. If these measurements are made regularly at the entrance of classrooms at schools, and the entrance and exit to the rooms of the guests at hotels, even if the person does not feel feverish, the situation of the fever rising during the day can be easily noticed."

Pandemic accelerated the process

Akgün also stated that they decided to carry out the product development process that they plan to spread over time together with the pandemic and that the thermometer they developed can be used effectively in many areas outside of homes and hospitals. Expressing that these devices can be used in many different areas such as buses, shopping malls, plazas, technoparks, restaurants, hotels, factories, offices and workplaces, Akgün stated that they have completed their negotiations on the commercialization of this product.

"We can do mass production of this product especially with the sectors that develop and sell medical products, as well as receive support from sectors that have a software and hardware infrastructure for the health sector and are open to developing products in this field," Akgün noted. "In the development and testing stages of the product, it will be necessary to get help from health institutions, because hospitals with variable health-related parameters are the most suitable areas for testing a health-related prototype. We have also established our connections on this issue."