Akbank invests 400 thousand dollars in the business idea of Akbank employees.

The second term of the Akbank+ program, which enables Akbank employees to work on entrepreneurial ideas full-time, has been completed. The bank has added Metriqus, an artificial intelligence-based analytics platform solution for game studios, to the entrepreneurship ecosystem with a $400,000 investment. Thus, the total investment made by Akbank to bring the ideas developed by its employees to life has increased to $1.4 million.

As one of the leading supporters of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, Akbank, under the innovation center Akbank LAB, runs the Akbank+ program to support its employees who want to establish their own ventures. In the second term of the program, the bank invested $400,000 in the Metriqus venture, which enables game studios to make data-driven decisions in their marketing activities. Along with the investments made in the Waste Log and Voltla ventures in the first term of Akbank+, the total investment reached $1.4 million.

Akbank LAB, through collaborations with fintechs and open innovation programs, offers programs to support the innovation culture both within the bank and in the ecosystem. In this context, the Akbank+ program allows Akbank employees to continue their career journey as entrepreneurs. Over 400 Akbank employees applied to the program in the first two years. The selected in-house entrepreneurs of the second term of the program worked at Akbank LAB for over 6 months to bring their ventures to life. The Metriqus venture was realized following the evaluation by the Akbank+ Investment Committee in the final stage of the program.

Burcu Civelek Yüce: ‘With Akbank+, we continue to strengthen the intrapreneurship muscles of our bank’
Burcu Civelek Yüce, Executive Vice President of Retail Banking and Digital Solutions at Akbank, stated that the program is a reflection of Akbank’s journey to ‘Defining the Future of Banking.’ She mentioned that they established the Akbank LAB innovation center in 2016 with the aim of developing meaningful and distinctive innovative solutions. By taking our intrapreneurship efforts to the next level, we launched the Akbank+ program, through which Akbank employees with venture ideas can receive end-to-end support in areas such as education, mentoring, product development, and investment. She expressed the joy of crowning last year’s investments in the circular economy and electric mobility areas with an investment in the analytics field this year. With the Akbank+ program, we continue to strengthen the intrapreneurship muscles of our bank. We will continue to support Akbank employees who strengthen the Turkish innovation ecosystem with innovative solutions in the future.

Pınar Anapa: ‘We take Akbank employees on a comprehensive development journey’
Pınar Anapa, Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Culture at Akbank, mentioned that they support the innovative ideas and new perspectives of Akbank employees with a program that is the first of its kind. She emphasized that with our intrapreneurship program Akbank+, we encourage Akbank employees to become entrepreneurs, create, and realize their ideas. We take Akbank employees on a comprehensive development journey to improve their competencies and expertise. As Human Resources and Culture, we support Akbank employees at every stage of this journey, stand by their side in giving a new perspective to the business world with their innovative ideas. I sincerely congratulate Metriqus venture, our first this year and our third spin-off in total.

Employees continue their careers as entrepreneurs with the program
As part of the program, Metriqus developed by Akbank employees Timur Demirkıran and Esra Atakişi enables mobile game studios to use data more effectively in their marketing activities. With the Metriqus solution, game studios can access intelligent insights for their marketing activities and manage all their data from a single point. Thus, they can make their marketing strategies more data-driven and receive recommendations to reach the right target audience. More detailed information about Metriqus can be found at metriqus.com.