KOSGEB President Ahmet Serdar İbrahimcioğlu Featured in the “Experience at Haliç” Series

The “Experience at Haliç” series, launched under the motto “From Experience to the Future,” aims to bring our students together with leading figures from the business world and various professional fields. The first guest of the series was Ahmet Serdar İbrahimcioğlu, President of KOSGEB. The event, held in the Grand Conference Hall, attracted great interest from students and academic staff alike.

The program began with a speech by Prof. Dr. Mustafa Aykaç, Dean of the Faculty of Business. Prof. Dr. Aykaç emphasized the importance of imagination in shaping young people’s goals for the future. He noted that entrepreneurship is made possible through courage, vision, and the willingness to push beyond boundaries. Highlighting that dreams reveal individuals’ expectations and potential, he quoted Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, saying, “Walk! As long as humanity imagines, it lives, even to the farthest limits where freedom’s blue ends.” This emphasizes the profound connection between imagination and life.

KOSGEB President Ahmet Serdar İbrahimcioğlu delivered his talk in an interactive format. Beginning with the question “What is experience?” he shared his own entrepreneurial journey and offered valuable advice to the students. He explained that entrepreneurship can emerge in many different environments and added that entrepreneurship often starts within the family, but if it does not start there, that does not mean it cannot start elsewhere.

He stressed that KOSGEB is an institution supporting commercial entrepreneurship in Türkiye. Noting that Türkiye is home to 4.6 million SMEs, he stated that KOSGEB provides support to one out of every three businesses. Addressing support for women entrepreneurs, he said that the institution applies affirmative action for women entrepreneurs and that this is reflected in their financial support programs.

İbrahimcioğlu emphasized that KOSGEB gives particular support to student-led technology initiatives. He explained that TEKMERs, or Technology Development Centers, have been established at universities across Türkiye, and that through 39 TEKMERs, the entrepreneurship ecosystem continues to expand. Unlike technoparks, these centers focus on incubation and serve technology-oriented entrepreneurs. He added that more than 800 entrepreneurs operate within these 39 TEKMER centers, that the goal is to create 100,000 tech ventures in Türkiye by 2030, and that currently this number is around 25,000. He also emphasized that KOSGEB is accelerating this process to significantly increase the number of entrepreneurs, believing that every student has the potential to become a tech entrepreneur, and that they support this structure across Türkiye.

İbrahimcioğlu also noted that entrepreneurship has become easier than ever in the digital age, and that as e-commerce platforms grow, everyone has the potential to become an entrepreneur. He emphasized that in the near future nothing will stand in the way of individuals owning their own companies and highlighted the support offered by the Ministry of Industry and Technology and the Ministry of Trade.

In the final part of the event, İbrahimcioğlu answered questions from participants, providing detailed insights into the entrepreneurship ecosystem, the process of turning business ideas into reality, and KOSGEB support programs. At the conclusion of the program, the Board of Trustees President, Kemal Bilal Aydın, presented KOSGEB President Ahmet Serdar İbrahimcioğlu with a meaningful gift symbolizing the deep historical heritage of Haliç.