Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

TOBB President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu participated in the online launch of Boost with Facebook, which was carried out in collaboration with TOBB, Facebook and Hackquarters and designed to support the digital transformation of SMEs.

In his speech, Hisarcıklıoğlu pointed out that Turkey is one of the countries which adapts to innovations and new technologies the fastest. “We are among the countries that use social media platforms the most in the world,” M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu said, adding that 93% of Turkey uses mobile devices and 63% uses social media. Hisarcıklıoğlu said that they know and follow every development in the digital world, “But unfortunately, we do not use all these technologies to produce business and to improve our business. Let's not forget that every crisis hides its own opportunity. We experienced this once again during the pandemic. Those who are ready to transform, those who have brought their business to digital, have come out of this troubled process faster. That's why we, as TOBB aim and work for the digitalization of the private sector and the development of the next generation of entrepreneurship. We want to bring entrepreneurs and SMEs to the digital environment in order to adapt to this new business environment.”

- Explaining the importance of digitalization to the business world

In this context, the TOBB President stated that the members offer infrastructure opportunities to guide them in the digital transformation process and noted that they provide trainings on digitalization and e-commerce.

TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “We produce projects in this context with the world's largest global technology companies. For example, together with Turkcell, we carried out the Women Writing the Future project. With this project, 1800 women learned to code. We realized the She Means Business Project with Facebook. We have provided digital marketing training to 5,000 women in 20 provinces. We taught you how to sell from social media platforms. With the ‘Stand Out with Facebook’ program, we aimed to give job seekers, individuals and SMEs who aim to start their own business, digital skills and online marketing competencies. In 2021, we continued to support the digitization of SMEs. The Facebook Small Business Global Situation Report shows that SMEs that managed to digitize during the Covid-19 crisis emerged more successfully than others. However, our SMEs are still far behind in digitalization. Therefore, the decision of the Stand Out with Facebook program to focus on the digital transformation of SMEs is extremely important.”

- Online trainings attended by 81 provinces

Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that the program, which was carried out last year, aims to provide SMEs as well as job seekers, individuals who aim to start their own business, digital skills and online marketing skills, and that 6,700 participants from 81 provinces participated in online trainings and 31 offline and 90 online activities were held.