Entrepreneur women’s platform: Arya
Ahu Büyükkuşoğlu Serter wears hats of businesswoman and entrepreneur coach. She is the President of Fark Holding, which operates on a wide range of sectors from automotive supply industry to appliances, and the creator of Casa dell’Arte brand carried by two art hotels in the Portuguese capital Lizbon and Turkey’s Aegean resort town of Bodrum.
She is also the founder of the Arya Women Investment Platform which brings together the start-ups of woman entrepreneurs and investors.
Arya has been organizing an annual Arya Retreat international camp, which harmonizes the tempo of work with entertainment, at the Casa dell’Arte hotel in Bodrum for a few years.
Young woman entrepreneurs, trained by Arya, make presentations to the investors and announce the amount of venture fund they need.
I have found the opportunity to meet with visionary and creative woman start-up founders during the three-day Arya Retreat 2018 event.
I spent three days together with the artworks of Ahmet Oran, Murat Germen, Mehmek Güleryüz, İnci Furni and Neşe Erdok, listening to the half-actualized dreams of young women.
Serter has founded Arya to encourage women’s entrepreneurship and to help women get to higher positions.
Further to that, some men who have been convinced in the power of women also have taken place among the 1,000 members of Arya.
Mata Automotive, one of the suppliers of the U.S. electric vehicle company Tesla Motors, is among the 35 enterprises she has invested in.
Some women who have expanded their businesses by meeting with investors at the previous Arya events were among the attendees at the Arya Retreat 2018, such as the creator of silk shawl and kerchief brand Tututukum, Tuğba Kuzdere.
The Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGIDER) were also among those who invested in Tututukum.
Özden Pusat, the founder of second-hand baby dress trading platform TutumluAnne.com, which is a good example for sharing economy, has been a member of Arya for four years.
Of course, entrepreneurs expecting initial investments of about $300,000 were also present at the event.
One of them was Pınar Bozyel, the founder of Parrotsize which provides simultaneous translation service via 3,000 translators living all over the world.
The founder of the Masraff app which helps people to manage their expenditures, Begüm Eray Sezgin, was also there.
The founder of healthy lifestyle app Vivoo, Gözde Büyükacaroğlu, and the creator of cheerful and environment friendly lady bag brand BloominBag, Neslihan Hacıalioğlu, also attended the event.
The owner of the veggie caviar brand Hyggefisk, Emine Yılmaz, and Duygu Yılmaz, who managed to produce bioplastic from olive seeds joined the event as well.
Esra Serbes, who provides soldier fly larva products to petshops with the animal food brand Naturansa, shared the first place with Masraff founder Sezgin.
I am sure we will be hearing about them a lot in the near future.