Turkey’s leading e-commerce platform ‘puts special emphasis on artificial intelligence’

Ahmet Can - ISTANBUL

A top Turkish e-commerce platform has started to give weight to artificial intelligence and big data in line with its target to fully integrate its operations with technologies, the company chair announced on Oct. 18.

Speaking at the Webrazzi Summit ’17, Doğan Online and Hepsiburada Chairperson Hanzade Doğan Boyner said that the most significant field on which they have focused over this year is artificial intelligence and its integration to the company’s business models.

“Hepsiburada has been in a key transformation process along with its 8,000 business partners, R&D center and operation center, which is one of the largest of our region. Artificial intelligence relies on big data. It is of big importance for us to perform real-time data mining, to embrace this data from different channels and to offer tailor-made products and services to our customers through technologies they can learn by themselves,” she said, adding that static and traditional technologies were not enough to collect and mine the required data.

“Thus, we are using artificial intelligence to create value for our customers,” she added.

Doğan Boyner noted almost 50 percent of their technology department would be composed of data scientists.

One of the key turning points of the Turkish e-commerce sector was the introduction of the hepsiexpress service, through which Hepsiburada makes appointment-based deliveries to 10,000 points on a daily basis, she said.

“This service also gives the opportunity for returns and refunds at the door to our customers,” she noted, adding that the hepsiexpress teams work seven days a week and 24 hours a day.

Hepsiburada is one of Europe’s fastest growing e-commerce companies, reaching 21 million unique visitors on a monthly basis, according to data from the company website.