Top 40 Hardware Angel Investors in Turkey

Investor	Hardware Turkey investments
Kerim Kotan	2
Murat Balcı	2
Ebru Dorman	2
Fatih Isbecer	2
Melih Odemis	2
Bedii Can Yucaoglu	2
Onur Topac	2
Caglar Karatas	1
Arman Eker	1
Umur Özal	1
Ali Rıza Babaoğlan	1
Umur Cubukcu	1
Belkıs Kuşçulu Özer	1
Ali Karabey	1
Sinan Güler	1
Naser Alim	1
Agah Uğur	1
Nevzat Aydın	1
Mustafa Bağcı	1
Omer Erkmen	1
Yüksel Açık	1
Ahmet Bilgen	1
İzzet Halyo	1
Sina Afra	1
Dilek Dayinlarli	1
Ali Rıza Babaoğlan	1
Vedat Çavuşoğlu	1
Mehmet Onarcan	1
Ali Demir Akel	1
Numan Numan	1
Koray Bahar	1
Tunç Yalgın	1
Ahu Serter	1
Tolunay Yıldız	1
Aksel Kastoryano	1
Davut Kohen	1
hi VC	1
Figen Korun	1
Joachim Behrendt	1
Muzaffer Akpınar	1

Kerim Kotan

Investment focus

SaaS, Software, Internet of Things
Seed, Funding Round, Angel
Turkey, Canada, United States

Portfolio highlights

FormaStar — FormaStar is a Sports-focused digital ecosystem.
Innovasion Labs PINC — Next Generation of Energy Storage
TelomEye Pharmaceuticals — TelomEye Pharmaceuticals provides treatments to prevent and improve age-related ophthalmologic disorders.

Murat Balci is an angel investor.

Investment focus

Apps, Fitness, mHealth
Seed
Germany, Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Meditopia — Meditopia is a mental coach platform that provides guided meditations, music, and contemplative content in a therapeutical context to improve mental wellbeing. The app combines mindfulness, science, and technology with a local look and feels that's more intuitive for each audience. It helps users to reduce stress, sleep well, love, and findpeace in today's hectic environment. Its mission is to help people all over the world discover happiness within themselves and develop the mental resilience to apply to their daily lives.
Thread In Motion — Looking for wearables to digitize your operations? Hands-free and ergonomic new generation smart gloves are here to help you reduce cost and risks.
Meditopia — Meditopia is a mental coach platform that provides guided meditations, music, and contemplative content in a therapeutical context to improve mental wellbeing. The app combines mindfulness, science, and technology with a local look and feels that's more intuitive for each audience. It helps users to reduce stress, sleep well, love, and findpeace in today's hectic environment. Its mission is to help people all over the world discover happiness within themselves and develop the mental resilience to apply to their daily lives.

Ebru Dorman

Investment focus

Health Care, Apps, Fitness
Seed, Pre-Seed, Equity Crowdfunding
Turkey, Germany, United States

Portfolio highlights

Teleporter — Teleporter is the World of Gamers in VR that brings us together in one digital place for all the ways gamers get together. Focused on gamers, inspired by the world’s best MMORPGs, and amplified by video-gaming enthusiasts, we dream of building a universe for gamers using technology, artistry, and magic.Our players in Teleporter can play manybuilt-in games, watch game streams, find like-minded others, and hang out together in fantastic 3D environments. Teleporter: WoG universe feels like and works like a game, but it also allows players to do many different things they usually love to do with other gamers. Our dream is to shape the future of gamers getting together digitally.
Genz Biotech — Genz is a biotech research & development company, developing novel diagnostic solutions for complex diseases, like cancer, coronavirus pandemic. Genz provides solutions for medical centers and/or end-users in cooperation with genetic disease and diagnostic centers. To date, Genz received 4 R&D grants and approval by Turkish Ministryof Health for 3 genetic tests.
Thread In Motion — Looking for wearables to digitize your operations? Hands-free and ergonomic new generation smart gloves are here to help you reduce cost and risks.

Fatih Isbecer - Founder & CEO @ Dataroid

Investment focus

Internet, Software, Health Care
Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
Turkey, United States

Portfolio highlights

Mindway VR — Mindway is a fully immersive meditation app that proves mindfulness doesn't have to be boring.
Gleam Games — Unique and exciting gaming experiences to enhance gamers' lives. We believe gaming is all about creating a world of unmatched collaboration, immersion, and emotion. At the heart of every gaming experience we create, we aim to bring you the best in-game experiences through design and technology.
Flora — Flora is the only sustainable brand platform acquiring and growing Amazon FBA brands with a world-class team of professionals.

Melih is one of the pioneer Internet entrepreneurs in Turkey. Born in Istanbul, he studied Computer Engineering and MBA at Bogazici University. After one year of professional experience in Citibank, Melih founded yemeksepeti.com with his partners in 2000. Yemeksepeti.com became the online food delivery giant first in Turkey, and then in Middle Eastand Eastern Europe. As a co-founder, Melih has acted as CTO of the company until 2013 and as Board Member until May 2015, when the company was acquired by Delivery Hero writing one of the biggest Internet exit stories in the region. Melih has been selected an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2007. Since 2011 he has been an active angel investor in internet and technology companies with more than 30 investments. He is one of the cofounders of Galata Business Angels, which is one of the first business angel networks in Turkey. He is a founding member of EO Turkey. Melih lives in London now with his family and continues to invest in tech start-ups globally.

Investment focus

Software, E-Commerce, Mobile
Seed, Pre-Seed, Angel
Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

Portfolio highlights

Deplike — Everyone can make music!
UP School — UP School fills in the gap of female participation in society’s most important technology roles by offering free educational programs for women through technical education programs that train them in a specific area of technology. UP School launched two pilot programs in Robotic Process Automation and in Data Science, and have two activecorporate-sponsored programs in Data Analytics and Android Development in partnership with Ford Motor Company, and Akbank.Students who graduated from the program have been recruited by globally lead companies such as Ford Motor Company, Unilever, Siemens and Coca Cola Company.
HotelRunner — HotelRunner is a cloud based hotel online sales and channel manager tool with an online marketing suite. Power your online sales now!

Bedii Can Yucaoglu - Advisor @ Hesapkurdu

Investment focus

Marketplace, Mobile, Big Data
Seed, Funding Round, Series A
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Tapu.com — Tapu.com has built the first managed real estate marketplace in Turkey and started selling from its first week of launch in 2015. Tapu.com is the first online real estate auction platform for the Turkish market, bringing many sellers like financial institutions, companies and individuals together with qualified buyers. Tapu.com has launched aneasy-to use platform that leverages the competitive bidding process on verified properties with a mission to make transactions easier and more transparent. Tapu.com has completed 4 major investment rounds from Earlybird Venture Capital and prominent Turkish angel investors.
Garaj Sepeti — Garaj Sepeti leads the digital transformation of used car market in Turkey, 5th biggest used car market on the planet with more than 8m transactions per year. Our B2B and B2C marketplaces brings trust and convenience to car dealers and individuals while buying and selling cars.
Vivense Home & Living — Vivense is a Turkish online furniture store that connects customers with furniture manufacturers. It offers a wide variety of furniture items such as sofas, chairs, tables, beds, dining tables, and more. Vivense allows clients to order their preferred furniture items online, and offers free delivery for certain products.

Onur Topac was born in 1990 in Istanbul. He graduated from Istanbul’s Austrian High School in 2009 and went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree from Koç University, Department of Industrial Engineering in 2013. Currently, he is pursuing a Master’s degree in Financial Engineering at Ozyegin University. Mr. Topac started his career in finance in 2008as a web site specialist at Gedik Investment; subsequently, he interned at FXCM in London in 2012. The following year, he participated in the establishment of the Investment Banking Department at Gedik Investment, leading the way in the Department’s technological transformation. Since April 2015, he has served as CEO at Gedik Girişim Sermayesi Yatırım Ortaklıgı A.S (Gedik Venture Capital Investment Partnership). Onur Topac started to provide support to technology investments and ventures as an individual investor before obtaining the necessary certification to operate as an angel investor in 2015.

Investment focus

SaaS, Big Data, Hardware
Seed, Equity Crowdfunding
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Poltio — We help the world's top brands access, engage with and learn from their users with interactive content and declared data.
Thread In Motion — Looking for wearables to digitize your operations? Hands-free and ergonomic new generation smart gloves are here to help you reduce cost and risks.

Caglar Karatas is a Co-Founder at GastroClub. He attended Harvard Business School.

Investment focus

Mobile, Internet, Messaging
Seed
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Doktorderki — Doktorderki is an online system that allows people to directly talk to doctors about their questions and problems regarding health. It aims to establish a scalable B2C growth model along with the investment it is taking and to do B2B work with pharmacists and mainly dermocosmetics companies.The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered inIstanbul, Turkey.

Arman Eker - CEO @ Trendbox

Investment focus

FinTech, Finance, Robotics
Seed, Angel
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Figopara — Figopara is a solution that discounts companies' e-invoices before their due dates with the offers received by financial institutions. It provides secure information to the financial companies that the customer is associated with and wants to reach by providing them with printed invoice information.Figopara was established in 2017 to developfinancial technology applications and is headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey.
Robomotion — What is Robotic Process Automation - RPA? Robomotion offers you the opportunity to automate your repetitive tasks such as Browser Automation, Content Marketing, SAP or Excel!

Umur Özal is an angel investor.

Investment focus

Baby, Rental, Retail
Seed, Funding Round
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Getmobil — Getmobill offers services in refurbished devices and their sale and resale.
Kiralarsın — Kiralarsın is a rental service to rent electronic devices.
Mutlubiev — A leading online cleaning services platform. It thrives on providing high-quality cleaning solutions and satisfying clients' personal needs.

I am a business professional since 2008 and a financial investor since 2015, having strategic positions in several scale-up tech companies/startups and real-estate assets. I continue to invest in the tech domain with a focus on SaaS solutions for B2B and B2C markets, and real estate options in developing markets with ROI targets.Grow inEMEA, the company I started in 2015, focuses on East Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East markets mostly for tech and real estate options and portfolio management. Also, my team provides market access services to Baltics, Turkey, and UAE / Saudi and gives investment advisory services.Prior to the investment focus, I worked in Linkedin EMEA Headquarter where I hold Director of Turkish Speaking Territory in Dublin, Ireland. Before, I have been with SAP AG and IBM in Turkey. I also give speeches at local and global investment events. I gave keynotes on ARAB NET in Lebanon, IT Arena in Ukraine, Rise Up Summit in Egypt, and NEXT in Germany. I also spoke at several closed corporate events of Roche, VESTEL, SAP AG, DenizBank, Turkish Economy Ministry, Turkish Exporters Assembly, Bakioğlu Holding, and AGT.Now, I am living in Tallinn, Estonia.Email: alib@growinemea.com Web: https://alibabaoglan.com Photos: https://gie.investments/my-photos

Investment focus

TV, CRM, Apps
Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Ekmob — Ekmob creates mobile projects for companies which have mobile field teams and operations.Companies with mobile teams and field operations have some common problems such as inefficiency in management of mobile teams, communication difficulties, inability to get instant data from field, offline mobile team on the field. All these problems lead tolack or deficiency in decision-support systems.
N'oluyo — N’oluyo is a TV program-based social platform and is your favorite buddy while watching TV.
Kahvegibikahve — Kahvegibikahve started with a crowdfunding campaign to make brewing real coffee easy and available everywhere. With high quality coffee beans and special Fiber Filtre™, your coffee is brewed properly, and without any hassle, you enjoy it.

Umur Cubukcu is a Founder & CEO at Citus Data

Investment focus

Software, SaaS, Mobile
Seed, Convertible Note
Turkey, United States, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Sporzy — Sporzy a booking, payment & progress tracking platform and a SaaS-backed marketplace for sports, bringing together trainers and studios who wish to benefit from digitalization with sports enthusiasts who seek habit-forming sports experiences, through online live, outdoor and in-person activities.
Mall IQ — Empowering Banks, Credit Unions, FinTechs, Loyalty Platforms and Retailers by Digitizing Real-Time Purchase Intent in the Physical World.
TeamSQL, Inc. — TeamSQL is a Multi-Platform SQL client built for collaboration, usability and performance. It supports popular database engines used by the majority and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.

Belkıs Kuşçulu Özer is an Angel investor.

Investment focus

Shopping, E-Commerce, 3D Technology
Seed, Series A, Funding Round
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.
Yollando.com — Yollando.com is a Turkish-based shopping and package forwarding service that facilitates shopping. They offer a variety of services such as Discounted packet forwarding, Buy for me, Package consolidation, Repackaging, Package tracking, Order returns/cancels, and Free storage for orders. They provide lower shipping rates to abroad with discountrates up to 80 percent.Yollando.com was established to contribute to the export of Turkish brands. Apart from shopping consultancy, they are already producing alternative solutions for logistics and product supply to individual persons and companies in Turkey and abroad.

Ali Karabey is a managing director at 212, a venture capital fund that focuses on investments in internet, communication and technology companies.Karabey also currently serves on the boards of several e-commerce companies, including Butigo.com, an online fashion retail start-up focusing on fast fashion; Balerin.com, a front-runner in theonline personal care vertical; and Hazinem.com, an online jewelry store.After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in finance, Ali resumed his career in Arthur Andersen’s New York office in the Corporate Finance department, executing mid-market transactions in the technology, media and telecommunications industries.In 2002, he joined Morgan Stanley Capital International and managed North American and European finance teams consecutively. He was also involved in the valuation, due diligence, and post-acquisition integration of acquisition targets.After Morgan Stanley, Karabey transferred to Deutsche Bank and focused on the bank’s principal investments.Prior to 212, Karabey moved back to Istanbul in 2008, where he provided consultancy services to clients in the government and private sector on PPP, project finance, and private equity advisory projects. Karabey is a member of Galata Business Angels, Istanbul’s premier angel investor organization, and also serves on the Endeavor Advisory Board.

Investment focus

Software, iOS, Marketing
Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
United States, United Kingdom, Turkey

Portfolio highlights

WeWALK — WeWALK, making the white cane innovative and smart, allows visually impaired people to walk more independently and safely and thanks to its three revolutionary features, it promotes their participation in social life on an equal foot with everyone.Obstacle detection: : WeWALK detects obstacles at head and chest level with its onboard ultrasonicsensor and warns its users with vibration patterns.Pairs with smart phones: : When connected with the WeWALK application via Bluetooth, GPS navigation is easy with WeWALK without the need to take out the phone.It gets better with new integrations: Every integration made possible with software updates brings new features to WeWALK. With its smart city solutions, WeWALK enables visually impaired people to access beneficial information around them such as nearby cafes and shops, while also providing them the info for closest public transport stops and arrival times. WeWALK has been developed so that it can gain new features such as nde hailing in the future with its ability to be integrated with new applications. WeWALK integrations developed so far include "Google Maps" and Alexa virtual assistant service.
Teleporter — Teleporter is the World of Gamers in VR that brings us together in one digital place for all the ways gamers get together. Focused on gamers, inspired by the world’s best MMORPGs, and amplified by video-gaming enthusiasts, we dream of building a universe for gamers using technology, artistry, and magic.Our players in Teleporter can play manybuilt-in games, watch game streams, find like-minded others, and hang out together in fantastic 3D environments. Teleporter: WoG universe feels like and works like a game, but it also allows players to do many different things they usually love to do with other gamers. Our dream is to shape the future of gamers getting together digitally.
TeamSQL, Inc. — TeamSQL is a Multi-Platform SQL client built for collaboration, usability and performance. It supports popular database engines used by the majority and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.

Sinan Güler is a Co-Founder at Guler Legacy. He attended Carroll College.

Investment focus

Apps, Wellness, Fitness
Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
United States, Turkey, Germany

Portfolio highlights

Insumo — Insumo is a personalized productivity & habit building assistant that works with other productivity tools.
Sporzy — Sporzy a booking, payment & progress tracking platform and a SaaS-backed marketplace for sports, bringing together trainers and studios who wish to benefit from digitalization with sports enthusiasts who seek habit-forming sports experiences, through online live, outdoor and in-person activities.
Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.

Naser Alim

Investment focus

Shopping, E-Commerce, 3D Technology
Seed, Series A
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.
Yollando.com — Yollando.com is a Turkish-based shopping and package forwarding service that facilitates shopping. They offer a variety of services such as Discounted packet forwarding, Buy for me, Package consolidation, Repackaging, Package tracking, Order returns/cancels, and Free storage for orders. They provide lower shipping rates to abroad with discountrates up to 80 percent.Yollando.com was established to contribute to the export of Turkish brands. Apart from shopping consultancy, they are already producing alternative solutions for logistics and product supply to individual persons and companies in Turkey and abroad.

Agah Uğur

Investment focus

Software, Apps, CRM
Seed, Funding Round, Pre-Seed
Turkey, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Missafir — Missafir is a PropTech start-up in Istanbul. We are the first short/mid term home rental management company in Turkey!We deliver for our customers through a combination of thoughtful interior design and attentive hotel-style services that deliver superior earnings from short/mid term rental management through our strength in data-drivendynamic pricing solutions.
Mukellef | a Workhy Company — More than 20,000 entrepreneurs chose us for company formation, financial process management, tax return preparation, and bookkeeping services.
Robomotion — What is Robotic Process Automation - RPA? Robomotion offers you the opportunity to automate your repetitive tasks such as Browser Automation, Content Marketing, SAP or Excel!

Nevzat Aydın is the CEO of Yemeksepeti.com, the first and biggest online food delivery portal in Turkey.Born in 1976 in İstanbul, Nevzat Aydın completed his secondary education at the Bursa Anatolian High School. Following his graduation from Boğaziçi University Department of Computer Engineering, he went to the United States where he receivedhis MBA at the University of San Francisco in Silicon Valley.During his stay in the United States, Aydın followed the latest developments on e-trade before he returned to Turkey in 2000 to launch his project, Yemeksepeti.com. Serving as the CEO of Yemeksepeti.com, Nevzat Aydın introduced a brand new dimension to e-trade in Turkey.In 2007, Yemeksepeti.com was selected the “Endeavor Entreprenur” by Endeavor Turkey. Aydin was also selected the “Most Successful Turkish Young Entrepreneur” by the CNBC-e Business magazine in 2010 for his successful work since the foundation of Yemeksepeti.com.As the founder and CEO of Yemeksepeti.com, which celebrated its 11th anniversary in 2012, he won the first prize in 2011 in the “Male Entrepreneur of the Year” category at the “Businesspeople of the Year” survey conducted by the Ekonomist magazine among nearly 3,000 business people.Aydin is a member of the Young Entrepreneurs Supreme Board of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, and a founding member of Galata Business Angels.Aydın was one of the 150 entrepreneurs invited from all over the world to the Entrepreneurship Summit held by US President Barack Obama on April 26-27, 2010.He was also among the speakers at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) Conference, which is deemed as one of the world's most prestigious conferences with its content on innovation and developments in the digital world. He is also an editorial advisor of GQ Turkey, one of the 5 “dragons” of the Dragons’ Den Turkey show, and a Board Member of Trabzonspor sports club.

Investment focus

Internet, Software, E-Commerce
Seed, Angel, Funding Round
Turkey, United States, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Getmobil — Getmobill offers services in refurbished devices and their sale and resale.
Apollo IoT — One of Turkey's digital energy platform initiatives is Apollo IoT. This platform is intended for invoice control, optimization, and forecasting. It allows you to monitor historical and current consumption data and confirm the correctness of your electricity bill, all without the need for device or hardware installation. Apollo assists inlowering the cost of electricity usage by providing real-time verification, detecting anomalous consumption and reactive fines in real-time, and informing you with enhanced warnings. It makes energy monitoring of corporate employees more realistic, saves money by boosting energy efficiency, and protects the environment thanks to its user-friendly web-based interface and excellent graphics.
Shark Guitar — Shark Guitar sells innovative electric guitars.

Mustafa Bağcı is an Angel investor.

Investment focus

Shopping, E-Commerce, 3D Technology
Series A, Funding Round, Private Equity
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.
Yollando.com — Yollando.com is a Turkish-based shopping and package forwarding service that facilitates shopping. They offer a variety of services such as Discounted packet forwarding, Buy for me, Package consolidation, Repackaging, Package tracking, Order returns/cancels, and Free storage for orders. They provide lower shipping rates to abroad with discountrates up to 80 percent.Yollando.com was established to contribute to the export of Turkish brands. Apart from shopping consultancy, they are already producing alternative solutions for logistics and product supply to individual persons and companies in Turkey and abroad.

Omer Erkmen is the co-founder at Yeni Nesil Kafası. Omer Erkmen attended UC Santa Barbara.

Investment focus

Software, E-Commerce, Analytics
Seed, Pre-Seed, Angel
Turkey, United States, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Salvor — These are the ideas and the philosophy behind Salvor.io; why it exists, how it will adapt to the newer ways of creation by forming a bridge between ideas and effort. Salvor is a combination of fresh understanding of contemporary digital arts and assets, adaptive of the new free economy, and a sustainable approach to new ways of doing creativebusiness taking advantage of the collective internet culture. We have the dreams, we have the talent and we have the will.
WeFarm — WeFarm maintains vacant fields for you and converts them into productive farms.
Mindsite — Mindsite provides e-commerce analytics. Easily monitor key metrics from price to visibility in real time. Increase your online sales.

Yüksel Açık

Investment focus

3D Technology, Medical Device, Test and Measurement
Series A
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.

Ahmet Bilgen Turkish Cypriot entrepreneur and angele investor. He lives in Famagusta-North Cyprus. He finished primary school and high School in Famagusta. He has been a very active person all throughout his life, he received a Black Belt II. Dan in TaeKwon-do, played in the local soccer team while studying at Canbulat high school. Ahmet was alsohelping his family with their farming business by selling the produce to shops, making some money in the meanwhile which he used to buy his first bicycle, first ball or his first pair of sneakers. Ahmet graduated with Bsc in Applied Marth and Computer Science from Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) in 1993. Between 1993 and 1995 he got his Masters degree in Computer Science. Right after he started his PhD degree in Computer Science but decided to quit academia after his first semester. During his masters and PhD degrees, he took part in developing intelligent user interfaces and inmemory data concepts for mobile devices. After leaving academic life, Ahmet worked in various IT companies for about 2 years and then joined SAP where he had his first professional work experience. Ahmet joined SAP Turkey as the Technology Consultant, and therefore took part in the implementation of more than 100 SAP projects with companies like Yaşar, Koç, Sabancı, Havelsan, Arena etc. as these were the first implementers of SAP ERP in Turkey. During his tenure at SAP, he worked in various roles such as technical consultant, business analyst, project and team manager and architect. Ahmet, after working at SAP for 2 years and getting enough project experience and honing on his technical skils, he decided to set up FIT “Future Information Technology” Solutions together with 3 of his friends in 1999. By the end of 1999 FIT had already made its first million USD revenue. FIT has integrated Turkey’s most important e-commerce platform named “Arena Computer Supplier Portal” with SAP. This was featuted as an international success story by SAP Inside magazine in 2001. FIT Solutions(lately became Foriba) has a lot of experience from completing many software integration projects. Working with the top 250 companies also gives the company the advantage to have a more extensible, scalable, sustainable and supportable product. These experiences and know-how attained over the years put the company in an advantageous position to achieve end-to-end e-invoicing solutions. in 2019 Ahmet Bilgen exited from Foriba. Foriba did: - Series A With Revo Capital - Series B With Revo, IFC, Endeavor Catalyst - Exit

Investment focus

Education, Artificial Intelligence, E-Commerce
Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
Turkey, United Kingdom, Estonia

Portfolio highlights

Topi — Topi is an B2B e-commerce platform for wholesale market.
admarket.co — Outdoor,Billboard,Taxi,Bus,Print,sms Advertising,book ad spaces in The USA-admarket
Komunite — Community is an educational channel and community founded to help people who sell their time become people who sell their products.

İzzet Halyo

Investment focus

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Software
Seed, Funding Round
Turkey, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Aposto — All-in-one media service currently based in Istanbul, Turkey.
HadsUp — HadsUp is a revolutionary Ad-Tech platform which combines AI and Hologram Technology
Robomotion — What is Robotic Process Automation - RPA? Robomotion offers you the opportunity to automate your repetitive tasks such as Browser Automation, Content Marketing, SAP or Excel!

Sina is a Serial Entrepreneur. His latest endeavor is Tiko which he founded and serves as CEO. Before that he was the Founder of Markafoni, the first Online Fashion site of Turkey. Markafoni became also the first Turkish internet company expanding beyond the borders of Turkey: Markafoni launched sites in Australia, Ukraine, Greece and Polandbetween 2009 and 2011. Sina served until 2014 as Chairman and CEO. The Naspers Group acquired in July 2011 a majority stake at Markafoni and signed for one of the biggest deals in the Turkish internet. Sina is also an active Business Angel and invests in early stage start-ups. He is the President of the Entrepreneur Foundation and Endeavor Turkey Board (2013-2017).Sina has been elected as the “Internet Entrepreneur of the Year” and “Business Angel of the Year” in Turkey. Markafoni won several awards: “Best Web Start-up 2011” and “Best Online Fashion Site in 2011, 2012 and 2013”. The Wired UK magazin elected in 2012 and 2013 Markafoni to the hottest 100 companies in Europe. Sina was also selected (2014 & 2015) to the Top 100 most influential tech people Europe. In 2016 he was selected as one of Top 100 most influential tech people in the World (Wired Magazine). Forbes Magazin elected him to the "Brightest Minds" alive in Turkey (2019).Prior to Markafoni, Sina spent more than 5 years with eBay and 12 years with KPMG. Sina received a "Diplom Kaufmann" from Münster University and joined later Harvard Business School. He speaks five languages. His passion goes with his family and esports where he is the President of "1907 Fenerbahçe esports” team - a professional esports team in the TCL. He shares his thoughts on eCommerce in his personal blog www.sinaafra.com and on twitter (sinaafra).

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Software, Internet
Seed, Series A, Angel
Turkey, United States, Germany

Portfolio highlights

Vagon — Vagon is your personal high-performance computer on the cloud. Start Vagon instantly and run all challenging software from any device, anywhere.
Mowico — Mowico, an online no-code eCommerce app maker, enables eCommerce businesses to create Android and IOS mobile apps with unlimited customization.
Firefly — Firefly is the next-gen car advertising solution, featuring taxi and rideshare top advertising, in-car advertising, holograms, car wraps and more.

Dilek was actively investing as an angel and being an active chairwomen since 2017. She has been an angel investor in companies like Picus Security, DataRow (acquired by AWS), Genomize, and Genialis, having a board seat on multiple of them.Previously she was an investor at 212, an early-stage technology venture capital in İstanbul. She investedin companies like IyziCo, the biggest Fintech company in the region and Insider, global marketing automation software, funded by Sequoia Capital and so on.Prior to 212, Dilek worked at Groupon as Director of Strategy and Analysis, Management Consultant at Accenture and Business Developer at Koc Group. She started her career in the USA, where she held different project management positions and also started her own startup.Dilek received a BA honors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Yildiz Technical University and MBA from Johnson & Wales University, both with honor degrees. Dilek is also one of the first Kauffman Fellows, chosen from Turkey and distinguished by scholarship. She is also a founding member and leader of Arya Women Investment Platform. She is a guest lecturer at Stanford University and a judge at European Commission. Dilek was awarded as One of the Most Successful Women Leaders in Turkey, thanks to her contributions and impact on tech industry.Outside the office, Dilek loves to experience authenticity in new destinations. She is a competitive basketball player, a serious artwork collector, and an avid reader of books. She puts deliberate effort to spend quality time with her loving family and friends; informative pastry cooking sessions with her daughter, sophisticated board games while drinking coffee with relatives and friends, or book clubs to foster intellectual curiosity between friends and colleagues. She also jumps every morning to find the leaders of future who will be able to create big impact and help them at their journey. It is fascinating to witness how her life outside the office enriches her work as an investor.

Investment focus

Software, iOS, Transportation
Seed, Pre-Seed
United States, United Kingdom, Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Deplike — Everyone can make music!
liftOS — liftOS allows you to find, access and work with your SaaS tools without friction. Organise your data & apps and spend less time switching tabs.
Genialis — Genialis is a precision medicine data science company focused on new ways to treat disease. Blending computational biology and AI-based methods, Genialis merges and models data at the intersection of clinical and translational medicine and drug discovery. Genialis is trusted by biopharma and big pharma alike, to validate targets, predict biomarkersand optimally position novel drugs. Together, Genialis and its partners are bringing improved solutions to drug discovery to change people's lives.

I am a business professional since 2008 and a financial investor since 2015, having strategic positions in several scale-up tech companies/startups and real-estate assets. I continue to invest in the tech domain with a focus on SaaS solutions for B2B and B2C markets, and real estate options in developing markets with ROI targets.Grow inEMEA, the company I started in 2015, focuses on East Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East markets mostly for tech and real estate options and portfolio management. Also, my team provides market access services to Baltics, Turkey, and UAE / Saudi and gives investment advisory services.Prior to the investment focus, I worked in Linkedin EMEA Headquarter where I hold Director of Turkish Speaking Territory in Dublin, Ireland. Before, I have been with SAP AG and IBM in Turkey. I also give speeches at local and global investment events. I gave keynotes on ARAB NET in Lebanon, IT Arena in Ukraine, Rise Up Summit in Egypt, and NEXT in Germany. I also spoke at several closed corporate events of Roche, VESTEL, SAP AG, DenizBank, Turkish Economy Ministry, Turkish Exporters Assembly, Bakioğlu Holding, and AGT.Now, I am living in Tallinn, Estonia.Email: alib@growinemea.com Web: https://alibabaoglan.com Photos: https://gie.investments/my-photos

Investment focus

TV, CRM, Apps
Seed, Pre-Seed
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Ekmob — Ekmob creates mobile projects for companies which have mobile field teams and operations.Companies with mobile teams and field operations have some common problems such as inefficiency in management of mobile teams, communication difficulties, inability to get instant data from field, offline mobile team on the field. All these problems lead tolack or deficiency in decision-support systems.
N'oluyo — N’oluyo is a TV program-based social platform and is your favorite buddy while watching TV.
Kahvegibikahve — Kahvegibikahve started with a crowdfunding campaign to make brewing real coffee easy and available everywhere. With high quality coffee beans and special Fiber Filtre™, your coffee is brewed properly, and without any hassle, you enjoy it.

Vedat Çavuşoğlu

Investment focus

Gaming, Virtual Reality, Digital Entertainment
Pre-Seed
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Wide Game Studio — Wide Game Studio aims to provide people with innovative virtual reality gaming and application experiences that are unmatched. With great enthusiasm and excitement. Wide Game Studio strives to be an innovator in the virtual reality industry by pushing the frontiers of imagination.

Mehmet Onarcan is the Founder of Mentors Network Turkey. He previously worked at Project House as an Advisory Board Member - Digital Transformation. Mehmet Onarcan attended Yildiz Technical University.

Investment focus

Apps, Internet, Social Network
Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
Turkey, Ireland, United States

Portfolio highlights

Missafir — Missafir is a PropTech start-up in Istanbul. We are the first short/mid term home rental management company in Turkey!We deliver for our customers through a combination of thoughtful interior design and attentive hotel-style services that deliver superior earnings from short/mid term rental management through our strength in data-drivendynamic pricing solutions.
Doktorderki — Doktorderki is an online system that allows people to directly talk to doctors about their questions and problems regarding health. It aims to establish a scalable B2C growth model along with the investment it is taking and to do B2B work with pharmacists and mainly dermocosmetics companies.The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered inIstanbul, Turkey.
Local Guddy, Inc. — A marketplace connecting travelers and locals through unique guddy tours from locals all around the world. Taste local foods, drinks; see must see places, night life, views etc.

Ali Demir Akel

Investment focus

Retail, Analytics, 3D Printing
Series A, Funding Round
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Zaxe — Discover the Unique FDM 3D Printing Experience. Zaxe 3D Printers Provides Easy to Use with xDestop Slicer Software. Get Advantage in Additive Manufacturing with Zaxe Filaments
Vispera — Drive your retail execution to perfection with Vispera image recognition technologies and intelligent retail solutions.

Numan Numan is a Managing Director at 212 with a solid background in technology and management. Numan currently serves on the boards of HemenKiralik.com, largest marketplace for short term rentals and vacation homes in Turkey, HotelRunner, SaaS based management and marketing platform for hotels, and IyziCo, fastest growing payment platform.Prior to founding 212, Numan worked at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo and New York for more than 12 years. As a technology evangelist in the firm’s leadership team, he managed global engineering teams and focused on new technologies to bring competitive advantage to the firm. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Numan worked at Credit Suisse in Tokyo. After more than two decades in technology at investment banks, working closely with private equity and venture capital sectors, he followed his entrepreneurial instinct and ventured into other businesses.Numan holds B.Sc. in Computer Sciences from Ege University. He currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey where he is among pioneers cultivating the ecosystem.

Investment focus

Software, E-Commerce, Analytics
Seed, Series A, Angel
United States, Turkey, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Flow48 — Flow48 is a platform that allows companies to access capital by providing revenue-based finance services.
TeamSQL, Inc. — TeamSQL is a Multi-Platform SQL client built for collaboration, usability and performance. It supports popular database engines used by the majority and runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
FlightRecorder, Inc. — FlightRecorder offers developers with application analytics and engagement solutions to understand their applications’ users. It supports Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers.FlightRecorder also provides crash reports, API error logs, and analytics about the frequently used elements to assist businesses in their decision makingin product development. It also offers a feature that enables businesses to send targeted messages to their customers.FlightRecorder is acquired by ClickTale.FlightRecorder was founded in October 2013 and is based in Berkeley, California.

Koray Bahar is an investor at Ekmob.

Investment focus

Software, CRM, Apps
Seed, Pre-Seed, Angel
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Dusyeri — Dusyeri is an edutainment platform that focuses on children.
OppZone — OppZone offers a wide range of content marketing services.
Diştedavim — Diştedavim is a dental appointment platform that facilitates the appointment process in the field of dental treatment services.

Tunç Yalgın was Entrepreneur and investor, passionate about everything high-tech, disruptive and, even better, both!

Investment focus

Video Games, Mobile, Sports
Seed, Series A
Turkey, Germany

Portfolio highlights

Sponsoo — Sponsoo is an innovative online marketplace that connects non-professional athletes and sport teams with corporate sponsors. Athletes and teams create a profile on sponsoo.com, and sponsors search the database to find the perfect team(s) to sponsor.Important for German investors: Sponsoo is part of the INVEST grant programme that allows privateinvestors to claim back 20% of their investment sum as a grant from the German Department of Commerce.
Gram Games — Gram Games is a mobile game development studio, committed to delivering high quality mobile games that create real bonds through play. Founded in 2012 with headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, Gram Games has built a team of industry professionals focused on creating engaging games for mobile platforms. Due to the development and growth of Gram Games,a London office was opened in 2017.
Hero Concept — Hero Concept is a computer games company that develops visionary reimaginations of the timeless classics of arcade gaming. The company studies the histories of the ever-present classics in order to carry them into the 21st century--with panache. Hero Concept was founded in 2017 and headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey.

Ahu Serter is the Founder and President of Fark Labs. She previously worked at FARHYM Vehicle Interiors as a Head of Management Committee, Board Member. Ahu Serter attended Pace University.

Investment focus

Software, Baby, Information Services
Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
Turkey, Greece, Germany

Portfolio highlights

Ollang — Ollang provides cutting-edge AI dubbing, accurate subtitle translations, and closed captions services to enhance your multimedia content. Experience superior quality dubbing that brings your videos to life. Explore our services today!
Ampherr — Ampherr provides cutting-edge, intelligent energy storage solutions based on different chemical variations of lithium-ion cells, such as NMC, LTO, and LFP, for all types of electrical cars and stationary applications. Manufacturer of battery packs, focus on delivering application-specific products for practically all use cases while combiningquality, cutting-edge engineering, and agile service.
Memotive — Memotive is upgrading the mechanism for shift planning and service organization to digital. They developed tools that fall under the category of communication and feedback since they understand how essential it is for employees to interact with their businesses while working for them.

Tolunay Yıldız

Investment focus

E-Commerce, AgTech, Coffee
Seed, Series A, Funding Round
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.
ForFarming — Smart Agriculture for a Healthy Future
Yollando.com — Yollando.com is a Turkish-based shopping and package forwarding service that facilitates shopping. They offer a variety of services such as Discounted packet forwarding, Buy for me, Package consolidation, Repackaging, Package tracking, Order returns/cancels, and Free storage for orders. They provide lower shipping rates to abroad with discountrates up to 80 percent.Yollando.com was established to contribute to the export of Turkish brands. Apart from shopping consultancy, they are already producing alternative solutions for logistics and product supply to individual persons and companies in Turkey and abroad.

Aksel Kastoryano

Investment focus

Software, Training, E-Learning
Pre-Seed, Funding Round
Turkey, Hungary

Portfolio highlights

Avatao — Avatao's secure coding training platform helps development teams prevent security bugs and ship quality code fast.
Cameralyze — Cameralyze is a no-code AI platform to design and build AI applications and workflows without writing code. It includes hundreds of ready-to-use integrations and applications.

Davut Kohen

Investment focus

3D Technology, Medical Device, Test and Measurement
Series A
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Digime3D — Whether you're a fitness professional, doctor, or even a life coach, Digime3D softwares enables you to extract key body shape and measurements relevant to your industry.

hi VC

Investment focus

Software, Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology
Seed, Funding Round, Pre-Seed
Turkey, Estonia, United States

Portfolio highlights

Insumo — Insumo is a personalized productivity & habit building assistant that works with other productivity tools.
Mukellef | a Workhy Company — More than 20,000 entrepreneurs chose us for company formation, financial process management, tax return preparation, and bookkeeping services.
Cloud4Feed — Cloud4Feed helps businesses increase their brand values and maximize customer satisfaction by enabling them to make customer-oriented decisions with its solutions. They provide service to brands and businesses with different solutions in many areas, such as retail, automotive, insurance, finance, the hospital and health industry, and more.

Figen Korun

Investment focus

E-Commerce, Coffee, Sharing Economy
Seed, Pre-Seed, Series A
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Ni-CAT Battery Materials and AI Company — Ni-CAT is working on AI-assisted research and development of next-generation battery materials, which is the key to the transition to battery electric vehicles. Ni-CAT believes that the speed of EV transition is still not enough to prevent global warming and replace carbon-based fuels in near future, and it is not related to money or resources. Webelieve that speeding up EV transition is possible with our novel methodology, which combines three approximation to the solution: our unique AI-assisted materials research, digitalized reactor farm and our novel surfactant-assisted synthesis.As the electrification of the automotive industry expands, we deliver state-of-the-art technologies to meet the industry’s high-quality standards. To help our customers to step up the EV transition, we will be working on our research and development of lower-cost/higher performance, ultra-high energy density battery materials to serve innovative solutions for a brighter future. With our expertise in the application of machine learning in material science, we are developing low cobalt/high nickel lithium cathode materials. Cathode determines the type of a lithium battery and is the limiting factor for nickel-based batteries. Further improvement in battery performance is possible through AI-assisted custom high nickel cathode materials with increased charge rate, charge to discharge ratio, tap density, or any other specifications. By our unique computer-controlled digital reactor farm, we numerize synthesis parameters and output specifications for the machine learning algorithm we have been developing.
İletmen — İletmen is a food delivery app which takes packages, products or orders from your business and deliver them to your customers.
Riskoptima — Riskoptima is a financial engineering company.

Joachim Behrendt is the Head of the Advisory Board at Vali Berlin.

Investment focus

Software, SaaS, Social Media
Seed, Angel, Series A
Turkey, United States, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

Scorp — "User generated viral video machine " is the definition for Scorp Ads. We convert the power of word of mouth into short selfie-videos. Scorp seeds the message and motivates users to join the conversation on brands' topic with positive association or hype about the brand.Viewers like to consume content that they are interestedin. In Scorp there are wide range of videos that is not just only about comedy or music but also about news, politics, sports, movies&TV shows, celebrities, books-art, food, fashion-beauty and relationships that are created as selfie 15 second videos. Scorp shows users 100s of videos, opinions or approaches on a single topic. The format enables users to discover different point of views.
Kolay Randevu — Kolay Randevu is an online beauty booking marketplace and salon management software for salons.
Local Guddy, Inc. — A marketplace connecting travelers and locals through unique guddy tours from locals all around the world. Taste local foods, drinks; see must see places, night life, views etc.

Mehmet Muzaffer Akpinar is a businessperson who is associated with organisations like Penta Tekstil, MV Holding, Kvk Teknoloji Urunleri Ve Ticaret AS, Penta Textile, etc. He is an alumni of Bogazici University.

Investment focus

3D Printing, 3D Technology, Consumer Electronics
Seed
Turkey

Portfolio highlights

Zaxe — Discover the Unique FDM 3D Printing Experience. Zaxe 3D Printers Provides Easy to Use with xDestop Slicer Software. Get Advantage in Additive Manufacturing with Zaxe Filaments