Top business organization set to bring giant venture funds together with Anatolian firms

Hacer Boyacıoğlu - ANKARA

Turkey’s largest business organization, the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), is set to bring $1 billion worth venture capital funds together with Turkish companies based in Anatolia with high growth potentials in the next two years, its president has said. 

Speaking to a group of journalists, TOBB head Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu said their aim was to move the growing Anatolian companies up to an upper league. 

“We will bring a number of venture capital funds with an investment pool worth $1 billion together with Anatolian companies, which have great growth potentials, in the next two years. We want to help these companies scale up,” he noted. 

Saying that venture capital funds’ investments totaled $320 billion in 2016, Hisarcıklıoğlu noted that their investable financial sources hit $525 billion. 

According to Hisarcıklıoğlu, their aim is to take Istanbul-based venture capitalists, all of whom are the members of TOBB’s Venture Capital Assembly, to Anatolia.
 
In a bid to achieve this goal, the association held its first meeting in this kind in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, which is a regional industrial hub, he said, adding that the second meeting will be held in the Central Anatolian province of Konya. 

“We invite companies which will lure the attention of venture capital funds according to a series of criteria, which are set by these funds. Companies which grew in the last three consecutive years on a sustainable manner attract their attention,” Hisarcıklıoğlu added. 

A total of 10 venture capital funds, namely Diffusion Capital Partners BV, Doğuş SK Girişim Sermayesi, Earlybird, İda Capital, İş Girişim Sermayesi, Mediterra Private Equity, Revo Capital, Taxim Capital Advisers Limited, Tekfen Ventures and Turkven Private Equity, will take part in this initiative.