Tülin Akın, Co-Founder of Tabit, presented Tabit and the Vodafone Smart Village at the ETÜ Entrepreneurship Summit, organized online by the TOBB ETÜ Economics Community. Akın stated, “We established it so that our farmers could see, touch, and apply the technology.”
The summit was held online and featured speakers including Mesut Keskin (Founder of E-Bursum), Itır Erhart (President of Açık Açık Association), Gülcan Yayla (Founder of Kodluyoruz), Başak Sucuka (Founder of Givin), and Ahmet Batat (Founder of İhtiyaç Haritası). The second part of the summit, scheduled for Wednesday, October 21, focused on “Everyone Should Get to Know Entrepreneurship.”
During the program, the advantages and challenges of entrepreneurship were discussed, with participants sharing real-life experiences from their ventures. Speaking about the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Tülin Akın shared the development and milestones of the Vodafone Smart Village with concrete examples. She emphasized that dreams never come true without taking action:
“Of course, there were difficulties at first. You can’t just wake up and say ‘let’s do this’ and make it happen. It requires effort, time, and multiple stages. But today, young people expect immediate success. Every venture carries risk and challenges.”
“We Built the Smart Village So Farmers Can Interact With Technology”
Akın gave examples from the Smart Village:
“We have 24 staff members at the Smart Village, all from different cultural backgrounds. There’s an engineer living in the village and also our aunt working in the kitchen. For example, she says, ‘Let’s sell the molasses we boiled.’ That, for me, is entrepreneurship. Someone else suggests, ‘Since they buy molasses, let’s package and sell products made by women in the village.’ Another says, ‘Let’s open a website and sell them.’ Many ideas are generated and implemented.
The Smart Village idea emerged in 2012 and we were able to bring it to life in 2015. We built the Smart Village so farmers could see, touch, and apply technology. Once smartphones became widespread, we had the device to control technology, and that gave us the courage to implement the project. In entrepreneurship, it’s crucial to maintain excitement and create an energetic environment. Keeping that enthusiasm alive is one of the most important tasks for an entrepreneur.”