Arçelik to grant $5 million support to 7,000 entrepreneurs

Arçelik Garage Innovation Hub, a growing global open innovation platform, has to date interacted with more than 2,000 partners, scouted more than 1,800 startups and developed cooperation with more than 80 startups.

Garage Innovation Hub organized an Open Innovation Day with the participation of a large number of startups, business leaders and investors from around the world in order to contribute to the dissemination of the open innovation culture.

As part of the United Nations Generation Equality Forum commitments, Arçelik plans to reach 7,000 entrepreneurs, 5,000 of whom are women, by 2026, and support them in reaching financial support of approximately $5 million with the Garage Innovation Hub.

Partnering with venture capital funds

“As a growing global innovation platform, together with our nearly 2,000 stakeholders, including mentors, investors, universities, and entrepreneurs from all over the world; we provide business development, access to financial support and mentorship to entrepreneurs, starting from the idea stage,” Arçelik’s chief strategy and digital officer Utku Barış Pazar said.

On the path to becoming one of the leading open innovation platforms on a global scale, Pazar said they have set important goals such as supporting the incorporation of new ideas in many fields like sustainability, artificial intelligence, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), marketing and production technologies, and health care, in each of the 146 countries where they operate in the next five years.
Arçelik has over 40,000 employees throughout the world and its global operations include sales and marketing offices in 49 countries, and 28 production facilities in nine countries. It has 12 brands, namely Arçelik, Beko, Grundig, Blomberg, ElektraBregenz, Arctic, Leisure, Flavel, Defy, Altus, Dawlance and Voltas Beko.

It is Europe’s second-largest white goods company by market share, based on volumes. Arçelik reached a consolidated turnover of 6.5 billion euros ($6.85 billion) in 2021.

Arçelik’s 29 R&D and design centers and offices across the globe are home to over 2,000 researchers and hold more than 3,000 international patent applications to date