Earlier this month, I had the good fortune to attend DLD Bosphorus, an event held in Istanbul and featuring some of the hottest Turkish start-ups and entrepreneurs. It was a memorable evening. Held on the banks of the Bosphorus, at Istanbul’s amazing Modern Museum of Art, the DLD event featured a number of leading Turkish entrepreneurs including Sina Afra, the CEO of the private shopping club Markafoni and Sureyya Ciliv, the CEO of the dominant Turkish cellphone provider Turkcell. And after dinner, I was lucky enough to interview both Afra and Ciliv about the local tech scene in Turkey. So what’s really happening on the banks of the Bosphorus? I asked two of Turkey’s most successful entrepreneurs. Their answers might convince some startup entrepreneurs to head east – to a place that, literally, bridges Europe with Asia.
Markafoni is the first and leading Turkish Private Shopping Club, offering several sales events per week with discounts up to 90% for its members. It was founded in July 2008. In May 2009, brandsexclusive.com.au, the leading Private Shopping site in Australia was launched. The company launched in 2010 modnakasta.ua in the Ukraine and brandsgalaxy.gr in Greece. In 2011 markafoni city and zizigo.com have been launched. Markafoni is organizing 500 sales events per month. Every 10 seconds an article is being...
GSM-based mobile communication in Turkey began when Turkcell commenced operations in February 1994. Turkcell then signed a 25-year GSM license contract with the Ministry of Transportation on April 27 1998. Since then, it has continuously increased the variety of its services based on mobile audio and data communication, as well as on its quality levels and as a result, its number of subscribers. As of September 30, 2012, Turkcell has made USD 8.7 billion worth of investments (including 2G...
Süreyya Ciliv is the CEO of Turkcell since January 2007. Before joining Turkcell, he held executive positions in Microsoft Corporation. In 1997, Ciliv was appointed the Country Manager for Microsoft Turkey and in 2000 he was promoted to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, USA. He held executive positions in the Microsoft Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services Group from 2000 till 2007. Ciliv was the head of Field Readiness Strategy and Systems Division of Microsoft, before he joined Turkcell....
Sina is Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Markafoni, the first and leading Flash Sales Site of Turkey. Markafoni was founded by Ahmet Emre Sari, Tolga Tatari and Sina Afra in 2008 and became the first Turkish internet company expanding beyond the borders of Turkey: Markafoni launched Flash Sales sites in Australia, Ukraine, Greece and Poland between 2009 and 2011. In Turkey, Markafoni established in April 2011 zizigo.com, the leading shoe vertical site as well as Misspera.com, a vertical cosmetics...
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