Private branch of İşbank for entrepreneurs

Türkiye İş Bankası launched the Istanbul Entrepreneurship Branch, exclusively for entrepreneurs, in İş Towers in Levent. The opening of the branch was held with a ceremony attended by İşbank General Manager Hakan Aran and stakeholders from the entrepreneurship ecosystem. With its different design and customized service model, the Entrepreneurship Branch will serve startups and entrepreneurs. The target customer group is technology-based new generation startups, mutual funds, angel investors and other stakeholders of the ecosystem. In this respect, the branch will deal with technology-based startups and offer personalized products and services to their needs, unlike traditional banking. The branch will also provide cooperation opportunities in accounting and finance management, investment processes, human resources and legal issues, and network support for the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Making a speech at the opening, İşbank General Manager Hakan Aran said:

“By supporting entrepreneurs, we support the growth of the country. The contribution of the amount allocated to venture capital to growth is approximately 10 times more than a traditional capital. Our journey in entrepreneurship started with our visit to Silicon Valley in May 2015. During our visit, we tried to discover, see and understand the features that make the startups there successful on a world scale. We wanted to bring this to our country, to repeat and copy it, and we believe that we have come a long way in the last 5-6 years. The first step we took when we came to Turkey was to start the Workup Acceleration Program. In this way, we had the opportunity to receive and evaluate the applications of our 13 thousand entrepreneur candidates. Together with our 8th term graduates in October, we graduated 81 startups from this program. While İşbank invested 3.13 million USD in 5 startups, 30 startups among our graduates received 7.2 million USD in investment.

This program was followed by the Innovation Centers we opened in Silicon Valley and China, the Maxis Venture Capital Portfolio Management Inc. that we established to support entrepreneurs and the funds under it, our partnerships with the Turkish Entrepreneurship Foundation and Arya Women’s Investment Platform and Koç University KWorks on social entrepreneurship. Our cooperation with the program was followed by Softtech Ventures, which we established to revive and promote the topic of in-house entrepreneurship. By opening the Istanbul Entrepreneurship Branch, we completed the last missing piece in this field. With this branch, we aim to ensure the maturation of the entrepreneurship ecosystem and to allow the entrepreneurship culture in our country to flourish correctly. It is very important for our entrepreneurs to feel at home, at their office, to know that there is a bank that understands them, speaks the same language as them, supports and encourages them, that they can hold their meetings in this place and meet all their financing needs from the branch. We open our doors to all entrepreneurs and tell them that they should feel the power of İşbank with them.”