Turkey Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week took place between 6-9 December in 2017, and attracted more than 77,000 visitors, including industrialists, academics, students, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, business angels, and NGOs.
The event came from Turkey Innovation Week, which had been held since 2012 by the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) and played a major role in the expansion of innovation culture. The event attracted much attention of entrepreneurs internationally, because Istanbul lies between Europe and Asia, and with almost 200 cities within four hours or less flying time, so it is an attractive start-up destination for entrepreneurs who want to connect with an international audience. So it is aimed to make Turkey an international entrepreneurship center and to bring out global corporations from this center with the Born Global İstanbul event which will bring all the startups and investors together under the same roof.
"Born Global Istanbul", designed as a platform to bring entrepreneurs with investors and support service organizations for the first time became part of Turkey Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week. While 60 national and 60 global entrepreneurs to be selected after pre-evaluation, present their projects in the presence of jury and investors under the Pitching Competition and the top 3 entrepreneurs on both platforms will be entitled to receive an investment prize in the award ceremony on the main stage of Turkey Innovation and Entrepreneurship Week.
In 2017, as to global entrepreneurs, the British Start up Countly was chosen as the winner and received an investment prize of $50,000. Countly is an analysis platform for tracking customer travel in web, desktop and mobile applications. The runner-up project HeyDoc! received $25,000. HeyDoc! is a global and award-winning health communication platform that connects patients anywhere, anytime with physicians for non-urgent consultations. Third place went to the start-up iGRow from Indonesia, which won $10,000. iGrow is pushing the construction of organic farms in Indonesia by mediating between farmers, investors, landowners and buyers of crops. More than 1,400 hectares are already being used for agricultural purposes by working together with more than 2,400 farmers throughout Indonesia.
Half of the Turkish population is under 30, which means a huge talent pool of future startups and at the same time entrepreneurship is best way for the government to improve employment and promote innovation.