Building Companies

This article is written by Clinton James, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Hanzade Dogan Boyner, is a leading figure in Turkey’s online and digital world, a pioneer of e-commerce in Turkey, she founded and has led Hepsiburada.com to become the biggest online retailer in the region, she has a robust experience in building businesses and growing startups, she was a guest at Startup Istanbul 2016 and was interviewed in a fireside chat by Christopher Schroeder, who is an American entrepreneur, advisor and investor.
He is the author of the recent bestseller, and the first book on startups in the Arab World, Startup Rising — The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East

With an intent to build ecosystems into great businesses and making the world that we live in grow in powerful ways, Hanzade Dogan Boyner has done many activities with civil societies not only in Turkey but around the world. She is the eyes of women in our world in particular areas of entrepreneurship and beyond.

It is obvious to say that we are living in very strange and unusual times in the world, and being a great entrepreneur means to be able to manage uncertainty in very exponent ways.

She shares some observations as a leader where there is uncertainty and how to cope, deal with it and build upon it. Their company finds the year fundamental because they saw the need to think things through a long term basis. Business is strong and entrepreneurs should tend not to shift from their daily activities. Be committed and see the accelerations in investments, like they pumped more 200 million into platforms that driving agendas like growing retails.

They opened their platform to third party merchants and established retailers and provided them with networks to meet with growth opportunities. They have improved the product selection significantly with 2.5 million unique products. The company opened the market place and controls it from end-to-end using their own catalogue and enable merchants’ to list their own products on their platform.

Be committed to be fair in how you treat your retail business and your merchants. The customer should sit on the centre of your by-books logic to provide better access to the good quality products on a descent timeframe.

They launched yet another, a payment company that enables retailers who want to go digital and collect their money within a day. Merchants also get to have access to attractive campaigns, installment options and any sophisticated fraud tools that minimize risk.

A third company was also launched, that aims to roll it in about two to three quarter in Istanbul though is still on its pilot stage at the time. It is not an easy thing to handle e-commerce platforms generally as there's always pressure on margins and its costs but it's wonderful that they're such offers for more customers to come into the system.

Think about the opportunity that is growing with the risk that you take and what keeps you up late at night though this process. E-commerce is a complex business model with low margins and requires patience and hard work. But in the long run, you will have proven records of sustainability and profitability.

What keeps you and your team awake at night are issues related with customer service and how delivery companies miss to meet their service level because some high demand merchants can't handle the picking process and misses the dispatch time

Trust is the most important value you should hold, and there is need to protect it at all costs. If there is need to solve a particular problem, then do so as urgent as it comes.

https://vimeo.com/187686768