Turkish e-Commerce Founder to Support New Entrepreneurs

ISTANBUL, June 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Aksoy Group, the founder of sahibinden.com, Turkey's most visited e-commerce platform with over 2 billion monthly page views, is aiming to support promising internet projects through its newly established "Aksoy Internet Ventures".

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Aksoy Group Vice-Chairman Taner Aksoy said "We founded sahibinden.com in 2000, and the Turkish information technology sector has developed and undergone a major change since then. It's a great pleasure for us to witness the whole process, especially after having secured a place among the most experienced companies. Nowadays, without a doubt, raising funds for the right project will not be so difficult in such a promising sector. Our differentiation will be to share our vision and experience on top of our financial support. Shortly, Aksoy Internet Ventures brings 'smart money' "

Aksoy said the company was willing to invest in a portfolio of companies diversifying risk. "We are primarily considering investing in Turkey. We may get involved in projects that directly target foreign markets, as well as those that are extending from Turkey to abroad." Investors who share a common vision with Aksoy Internet Ventures will also have the opportunity to co-invest in these new projects, the group said.

Aksoy Internet Ventures made its first investment to dakick.com. Serkan Ünsal, General Manager of dakick.com, said they provide a personalized social calendar service which facilitates the automatic collation of all sorts of social activities that might fall in to a user's field of interest. The service helps users to keep up with city life by informing them about parties, concerts, sports games and similar events, as well as sending notifications about what is going on in the city, including the whereabouts of their favorite celebrities and most popular venues. The users can also share calendars with friends and establish a social network of their own.

Commenting on the investment and support they had received from Aksoy Internet Ventures, Ünsal said, "We are shaping the future of dakick.com together with a team that has more than 10 years of experience in the Internet sector, and a team that has made a great success with sahibinden.com."

"Partnering with a platform that serves more than 2 billion pages monthly (Turkey record) and 22 million unique visitors per month is an unprecedented advantage for new Internet projects", Ünsal said in noting the opportunities for growth. "The synergy of using common resources in logistics, infrastructure and technology will become the driving power for our success in the next term," he said.

For more information:
Naim Kutlu  
Grayling 
Tel. +90-212-243-36- 00  
naim.kutlu@grayling.com