15.11.2024 İzmir

The President of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Türkiye (TOBB) M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu attended the G3 Forum Entrepreneurship Summit organized in İzmir with the coordination of TOBB, Habitat Association and GEN Türkiye.

In his speech at the opening of the Summit, Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that they aim to increase the number of women entrepreneurs in Türkiye to 2 million.

Hisarcıklıoğlu said that they organized entrepreneurship summits in many cities, but the interest in the summit in İzmir was very great. Stating that İzmir is branded with a contemporary vision and stands out with its culture, Hisarcıklıoğlu advised young people on entrepreneurship.

Explaining that the only path for wealth is entrepreneurship and that they established the Turkish Entrepreneurs Board in order for Türkiye to prosper, Hisarcıklıoğlu pointed out that the number of entrepreneurs in Türkiye is half of the number of entrepreneurs in Japan.

Hisarcıklıoğlu noted the following: “Today, if we want to reach the same point with the Japanese economy, we need to increase the number of entrepreneurs. Young people and women have the most potential. When we started working on women in 2007, the share of women in total entrepreneurs was 4.5 percent. Now it is around 12 percent. The proportion of women has increased by almost 100 percent. Because we tried and tried with men, that's how many we have. But where we could not utilize the potential was women. When we make the number of women-men entrepreneurs half, Türkiye will be rich. The target is 2 million women entrepreneurs and we want this. We have a long way to go.”

Hisarcıklıoğlu said that work should be carried out for young girls studying at universities and that successful women entrepreneurs should tell young girls about their success.

- Other speakers

Ender Yorgancılar, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of TOBB and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Aegean Region Chamber of Industry (EBSO), said that a record number of entrepreneurs from all over Türkiye came to the summit and that the summit aims to enable young people to build their future, realize their dreams and contribute to the national economy.

Governor Süleyman Elban stated that İzmir is open to entrepreneurship and innovation and said, “Entrepreneurship has risks, but it would be wrong to talk about serious risks in entrepreneurship today. An entrepreneur is a person who is innovative, who establishes new systems, who finds new products, who can sell his product with high value to new people, customers and markets, and who can establish a system for all these processes.”

Cemil Tugay, Mayor of the Metropolitan Municipality, stated that the municipality will be an angel investor in young entrepreneurs and said, “Many of our entrepreneur friends from this hall who love their country and their people will do very successful things. We believe in entrepreneurship individually.”

Nevzat Aydın, Chairman of Gen Türkiye, Berrin Mahmutoğlu, Head of Project Finance and Company Analysis Group at Ziraat Bank, and Gülden Yılmaz, President of the G3 Platform, also delivered speeches at the opening ceremony.

Successful business people told their stories and gave advice to the participants in the panels titled “Ecosystem from the Perspective of Investors and Entrepreneurs”, “Sustainable Transformation in the New Era” and “Future of Digital Economy” organized within the scope of the summit.