Garanti BBVA and KAGIDER reward female entrepreneurship

Among other winners, Nagihan Yılmaz was proclaimed “Woman Entrepreneur of the Year” for her DG Doğru vegetable oil recycling project, while Şevin Ballıktaş was crowned “Most Promising Woman Entrepreneur” for having founded Userdot, an AI-powered company set up to promote e-commerce projects.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Garanti BBVA CEO Recep Baştuğ said, “we can now talk about sustainable development in a world where men and women are on an equal footing and women are very much a part of business life.” Garanti BBVA has been working tirelessly to support women entrepreneurs since 2006 and has invested more than 200 million TL in building an effective ecosystem in the last five years.

This year, the category of “Best Women’s Cooperative” was added to the competition for the first time. This award aims to support women who are trying to set up a business with limited opportunities in the Anatolia region. Notably, there are more than 900 women’s entrepreneurship cooperatives operating in Türkiye, with thousands of women members.

Esra Bezircioğlu, Chair of KAGIDER, expressed her delight at the thousands of applications that the competition is now attracting and its immense value in shedding light on women entrepreneurs whose stories remain in the dark: “The competition showcases the courage and creativity of women entrepreneurs and their value as role models for the next generation of female talent as together they contribute to the economic and social development of Türkiye.”

Talip Yılmaz, Editor-in-Chief of the Ekonomist, had the following words to say: “We embarked on this journey 17 years ago alongside our partners Garanti BBVA and KAGIDER in a bid to empower women in the Turkish ecosystem and so far 45,000 women entrepreneurs have taken part in our competition.”