The Black Box 2012-2014: Turkey
This article is written by Mohammad Eslim, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.
Mohsen Malayeri is the Co-founder and CEO of Avatech Accelerator, he is also the co-founder of Tribe Technologies. He is an Experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in information technology. Previously, founded a digital marketing platform that was acquired by a media holding. Later, a founding partner of a Tech fund that was recognized as top ten seed-investor and accelerator in the Middle East by Gust.
Turkey has been absent from the startup revolution happening around the world for a few years, that was until 2012 when all the factors were ready for this opportunity and emerge in the market with the startups adopted by the private sector their as an entrepreneurship incubator and accelerator.
There were factors that lead to such a development in the region’s market, demographic factors with conditions that lead Turkish people to grasp such opportunity as a new force in the business world. Turkey has a population of which %69.78 represent educated people under the age over the age of 18, which is interesting as it’s around the perfect time for people to start launching startups and being entrepreneurs[. What is even more interesting is that roughly 50 million people are between twenty and thirty-five years old, the perfect age for people to be able to buy online and be customers.
The population in 2012 used to be 75.63 million and right now in 2014 it is 77.7 million and still increasing . The internet penetration had been at %45.1 with around 33.8 million users.
Year 2014 has a forty-one million internet users which is a spectacular growth of internet users in only two years since 2012. Lots of people had access to the internet which meant that almost all can reach the world’s data and have access to the humans’ knowledge. In addition, with the internet the market has become massive and its capacity is getting exponentially bigger and with so many services to provide through it, so many products to advertise and market with so many platforms to work at and opportunities to find.
Cellphone users in turkey 2012 were approximately 67.68 million user with %84 penetration, while a considerate percentage of %30 of smartphones penetration, this hadn’t only been a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs to launch business or get into business from around the globe, but also a massive improvement of the customers’ base and the types of customers targeted by companies.
And as if that was not enough for a new revolution, mobile phones were in the process of evolving into smartphones, processors with so many options to change our lives and enlarge our circle of our environment, have insights, have your own access to any data you want to reach right under your fingertips and the extraordinary massive market that deploys technology in everything. Our abilities had been tested and stretched over the time. Now you can set at home, learn programming languages, build websites or applications and you would gain your own marketplace in the business with a profit valued by how many customers download your application your use your services.
All of those factors has been increasingly speeding the emerging of Turkey and many countries as a new market that was able to refresh the competition and the businesses in the region while attracting more ventures and investments from around the world. Accelerator programs and startup events have been hosted and established in Turkey with exponential growth.
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