The Women in Innovation Project, organized annually under the leadership of KADEM, which enables women who say ‘I have an idea’ to bring their ideas to life, is celebrating its 7th year.

The primary goal of the Women in Innovation project, held for the seventh time this year, is to increase women’s entrepreneurial courage and support them in transforming their projects into enterprises with high employment potential.

This year’s application process for the project, organized under the Istanbul Development Agency‘s Entrepreneurship Financial Support Program, with the partnership of Yıldız Technopark, Istanbul TTO, Turkish Exporters Assembly, Üsküdar Municipality, the participation of TÜBİTAK Marmara Teknokent, Bilişim Vadisi and the support of KOSGEB, has been completed. Those eligible to participate in the entrepreneurship camp were determined after the evaluation of the jury.

The opening ceremony of the camp, which started online training on October 10, was held on October 12 at Grand Cevahir Hotel Şişli. KADEM Board of Trustees Chair Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar, TÜBİTAK Marmara Teknokent General Manager Mehmet Ali Okur, Yıldız Technopark Entrepreneurship Program Specialist Hasan Demirezen, Bilişim Vadisi General Manager A. Serdar İbrahimcioğlu, and Istanbul TTO Manager Barkın Arak attended.

In her speech, KADEM Board of Trustees Chair Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar said: “Women in Innovation is one of KADEM’s branded projects. We primarily see this project as a very important step in establishing equal opportunities between women and men in working life. And we attach great importance to it. When we launched the project in 2015, we aimed to reach women with innovative ideas who wanted to develop themselves in entrepreneurship. We aimed to contribute to increasing women’s entrepreneurial skills and thereby creating new employment areas.”

She concluded her words by saying: “Our project has gained great momentum over the years thanks to the support of our stakeholders, the interest of women entrepreneurs, and the diversity of project content. We are very happy about this. We are also trying to develop and expand our support scope for this project, which attracts so much interest from women entrepreneurs, every year. For example, we included our online platform and open office applications in this year’s program. We had the opportunity to closely follow our entrepreneurs with face-to-face and online facilities. Thus, we provided sustainable training and mentorship support to our women entrepreneurs across Turkey.”

During the Women in Innovation Camp, entrepreneurs will be provided with free use of open office and prototyping workshops, experience sharing with entrepreneurs, and access to investment funds. Free access to finance, sales, marketing, and customer management applications will also be provided during the camp, along with application mentorship for national and international projects and photo/video promotion opportunities in digital newspapers.

The first two days of the Women in Innovation camp, which will take place between October 10-16, will be online, and the following days will be held face-to-face at Grand Cevahir Hotel Şişli. At the end of the camp, the finalist entrepreneurs will be determined. On Sunday, October 16, the finalists will receive their awards at a gala held with the participation of the Minister of Industry and Technology, Mustafa Varank.

• This year, a total of 300 thousand TL will be awarded to the top 3 entrepreneurs in the pre-incubation period: 150 thousand TL for the first place, 100 thousand TL for the second, and 50 thousand TL for the third.

• Three projects deemed worthy of the incubation award will receive “seed investment support.”

• Additionally, project stakeholders will provide entrepreneurs with office and workshop support for the first year for their project work.

More than 2 thousand women entrepreneurs have applied to the Women in Innovation Project, which has been ongoing since 2015. More than 200 women entrepreneurs participated in our innovation camp. Out of 30 women entrepreneurs who made it to the finals and received awards and certificates at the end of the camps, 13 established their own companies. They received awards in national and international competitions and achieved significant success in various sectors.

To get detailed information about the project, which is supported by NTV, Kanal 7, and Turkuvaz Media Groups as media sponsors, you can visit https://inovasyondakadin.org/.