"Turkey's Amazon"

Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Doğan Online, Hanzade Doğan Boyner is leading Turkey's digital transformation with Hepsiburada.com.

Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Doğan Online, Hanzade Doğan Boyner is leading Turkey's digital transformation with Hepsiburada.com. Hepsiburada.com is the largest e-commerce company in the region that encompasses Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EEMEA) and Russia. Doğan Boyner's next step will be to make Hepsiburada.com one of the first brands to be remembered in the world of e-commerce alongside of Amazon.com.

The warehouses of Turkey's largest e-commerce company is spread out over a vast piece of land, 100,000 square meters, situated in the Organized Industrial Zone in Güzeller, Gebze. This new centre of operations in Gebze of Hepsiburada.com, in which the Abraaj Group invested at the end of 2014 by acquiring a 25 per cent minority share, stands out as being the largest and most advanced technological investment ever attempted in the area of e-commerce in Turkey. Hepsiburada.com delivers 2 million products a month and the investment made in its technology base has been TL 125 million over the last three years. The warehousing centre that holds 1.2 million pieces of goods that cover a range of over 150,000 products is just the tip of the iceberg. There are other details in the invisible parts of the centre. Adding speed to its data processing, CRM and mobile shopping investments with its operations centre, Hepsiburada.com packages and delivers the orders of 17 million visitors to the site every month at a single click.

Goods arranged on giant shelves rise in the middle of the silence. We watch the feverish work down below from our windowed room on the top floor of the warehouse. At the core of the Hepsiburada business model is technology and innovation. The promise of this enterprise, which has reached huge dimensions in 14 years, is actually very simple: To make life easier. To furnish customers with everything they want--from diapers to refrigerators--making a wide range of goods available to them on any digital channel that no retailer could physically provide. This promise looks simple but so many complex operational processes lie behind it. The bustle of the warehouse makes an impact on all of us. Assembly lines weaving in and out, sections that separate the goods into the regions and cities of their destinations, packaging personnel... Hepsiburada.com is almost proving on the spot how customer spending habits have been channelled from traditional retailing into online retailing.

One of the experienced engineers informs us about how the technological innovations made in the data processing infrastructure are supported, how high-level CRM capacities have been launched and mobile shopping projects have been intensified. Just at that moment, Doğan Online Board Chairperson Hanzade Doğan Boyner walks in with her team. As a leader in the expansion of the Turkish e-commerce sector with Hepsiburada.com, Doğan Boyner is one of the people who stand out in making business processes that add value to the sector come to life. She looks very sporty in her black leather jacket and denim jeans. She is excited and dynamic. She has a full agenda. She is trying to move along with speed. And so are we... This detail is important to her. Since the motto of the brand is to make life easier, she says, in the awareness of how important an element speed is to a successful enterprise, "We're always after how we can provide our customers with the speediest service." In the knowledge of what a major achievement it was to enter the market in e-commerce with just a niche concept, Doğan Boyner pulls away from narrowing this down to only creating a business idea and carries the concept to focusing on the vast ocean that business development is. It is this ocean of ideas that she wants very much to turn into a transformation for the retailing sector.

This will be one of the subjects at the core of what she will focus on in the talk that she will present at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit that US President Barack Obama has invited her to attend in Silicon Valley in June.

The United States, to which she will be returning next month as an entrepreneuring leader, has meaning for her outside of her memories of school and her first experiences in the business world. After graduating from Saint Benoît French Lycée, Doğan Boyner went to study at the London School of Economics. She then worked for two years in New York in investment banking as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs and completed an MBA at Columbia University. In this period, she worked and studied simultaneously. She went out of her comfort zone in many ways. Her focus was on developing new business ideas. It was her entrepreneuring spirit that brought her to the brink of her work today. In expressing her criteria for evaluating entrepreneurship and doing business, she says, "In the matter of entrepreneurship, Turkey's patterns of thinking are so different from Silicon Valley that it's not even comparable. There is a culture of losing in the United States. In Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur can even boast about it if a business sinks. With us, we're afraid of losing. Entrepreneurship in Turkey will only gain meaning when this perspective changes."

THE STRATEGY OF AMAZON.COM

Doğan Boyner goes after actions that will add meaning in particular to a digitalizing world. She is building up a story in the e-commerce sector in Turkey and the region that is similar to what Jeff Bezos did with Amazon. Starting out with the goal of creating an online bookstore, Bezos launched a business concept that the world had never seen before. He created the most recognized brand on the Internet and became one of the world's most richest men. Beginning his adventure from out of his garage at home in the nineties, Bezos now reigns over a retailing empire that is worth 110 billion dollars today. I ask Doğan Boyner if this story has inspired her in any way. This is how she responds. "Amazon.com is very successful. We are studying the good examples before us. These, however, were not established in Turkey. As an enterprise that has thoroughly grasped the nature of the needs and expectations of the Turkish consumer, Hepsiburada.com has succeeded in forming an emotional bond with its customers and is making a difference by being a company that thinks globally but is able to act locally.
When the Abraaj Group, known for its investments in global markets, wanted to acquire a 25% minority share in Hepsiburada.com, Doğan Boyner zeroed in on one of her growth goals. She created major synergy with a strong collaboration. Abraaj's founder Arif Naqvi answered the question he was asked at the conference he attended in Singapore, "What do you think about Hepsiburada.com?" by saying, “They call them Amazon of Turkey, I call them Hepsiburada of Turkey…”

Sharing this anecdote with us, Doğan Boyner places great importance on this perspective. "Differentiating and leaving a mark, always thinking about what we can do differently" is how she describes it.

Doğan Boyner says, "I look at everything from the perspective of what benefit is the business bringing about? That benefit must provide a solution for a particular need. It should make life easier. Time is valuable in today's world. This is very important to us. We expand a company's market. The benefits we offer are clear. We believe in our business model."

With its Marketplace (Pazaryeri) investment, Hepsiburada.com has reinforced its capacity to be Turkey's largest e-commerce platform. The Marketplace feature offers collaborating brands the chance to reach consumers through the convenience of Hepsiburada.com. From the first days of its launching, brands such as Defacto, Colin's, Eren Holding, Collezione, Aydınlar, U.S. Polo have joined the Marketplace, representing a large majority of the apparel sector of TL 50 billion. Besides the major brands, the SMEs of Anatolia are also represented and Hepsiburada.com appeals to a total of 50 million visitors every month, reaching out with its marketplace platform to a wide audience that also includes small tradesmen.

The Marketplace platform for now accounts for 40 per cent of Hepsiburada.com turnover. Its growth is over 100 per cent. The Marketplace not only wins over new customers but increases the numbers of goods up for sale, while at the same time providing Hepsiburada.com with the opportunity to be more competitive. There are over 2000 registered stores that are a part of the Marketplace collaboration at this time. The number of visits in a month is 10 times the number at Turkey's largest shopping centre. The number of single units for sale is 1.5 million. Doğan Boyner comments, "We made a very substantial investment in this. This investment was not for construction or purchasing land; the entire investment was channelled into the technology of the operations centre, automation and shelving systems. We will be offering this service to all brands and stores that wish to procure it." She adds, "Another investment of ours that is geared to make life easier is to establish a distribution company. Turkey's distribution and cargo companies have not been able to adapt themselves to the speed of e-commerce. We plan to undertake our own distribution within Istanbul with this investment by the end of the year. We're concentrating on achieving same-day delivery and delivery by appointment."

Doğan Boyner has major goals in the matter of payments. Hepsipay, a one-hundred per cent subsidiary of Hepsiburada.com, has obtained an electronic money and payment license from the Banking Regulatory and Supervisory Agency. The new enterprise plans to support Hepsiburada and other companies as well.

THE IMPORTANCE PLACED ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Remarking that "Our most important assets are technology and Human Resources," Doğan Boyner stresses that the company works with a technology team of 150 engineers that will be increased soon by 100 more engineers. She says that this team plays a vital role in the enterprise. She sees entrepreneurship as creating value. She believes that companies should never lose their spirit in creating value. She expresses her pride in having seen four Doğan Online employees raise their hands to answer the question "Which of you see yourselves as entrepreneurs?" at a conference at Boğaziçi University and continues, "It's very important to me that they are confident of the professionalism of the company they work in and that they concentrate on what they can do to develop and improve it. Their confidence indicates how much they feel that the company they work for nurtures their entrepreneuring spirit and excites them.

One of the things on her mind is establishing an academy. Explaining that this subject comes up frequently in her chats with her academic colleagues at Boğaziçi University, Doğan Boyner says, "We want very much to open up an E-Commerce Academy. But we want this academy to be the best in its field." Doğan Boyner says that she wants to take part in an initiative that will provide young people who want to go into business with the right training.

She hates the expression "If only..." And also not taking a lesson from the past... Doğan Boyner says, "Every year, I ask myself the question, 'What did we do wrong this year?' I don't want to see things going well all the time. At every meeting with my employees, I always want them to tell me about something at work that did not go well." Her biggest "if only", she tells us, is that she wishes they had established the operations centre or the new delivery company much earlier. She continues, "But what's important is that we determine the rules of the game in the sector and the market we are in and then reshape these rules, renew ourselves for our customers and prepare ourselves for the future... We are undertaking all of these investments within the framework of the expectations of the market and our customers and at the maximum speed possible."

LEADING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

With a mobile application that has broken all records by being downloaded 5 million times, with a registered membership of 9 million, a visitor audience of 17 million and 50 million hits a month, as well as a track record of 2 million deliveries of goods, Hepsiburada.com is not in competition with retailing but, to the contrary, complements conventional retailing and leads the sector in its growth and development by providing the means to a "digital transformation." Evaluating the e-commerce sector in Turkey and the point to which it should be headed, Doğan Boyner says, "Right now, we may appear to be too new and relatively small to be a sales channel for some brands, but if we take the right steps, I have every belief that we can be the biggest and the most profitable channel, and that consequently, we can all be winners together."

Remarking that the market penetration of smart phones in Turkey has exceeded the 60 per cent mark, Doğan Boyner explains the reasons why online sales have remained low, providing examples from other countries. Pointing out that online shopping rates are 17 per cent in the U.S., 11 per cent in Europe and 17 per cent in the U.K., she continues to say, "The share of e-commerce in general commerce is very low at this time. It's our job to increase this. We are the sector's leader and there is no other company that is making a more substantial investment in this area than us. If there is one company to take on the responsibility, it is us as the leader of the sector. The share in our market is only 1.5 per cent. We're the ones who will be bringing this rate up to the level of 7 per cent.
Besides being a sales channel that is of benefit to the local retailing sector, hepsiburada.com also stands out as a promotional channel. In this context, Doğan Boyner has this to say: "We get 50 million hits to this site every month. Could there be a bigger promotion channel? Consumers, for example, who take a look at the products of one brand look to see what other brands there are, what the prices are, what the different comments are... We provide the brands with very important data and support them in their efforts to position themselves on this platform and in Turkey."

THE "DADDY, SEND ME TO SCHOOL" CAMPAIGN

Hepsiburada.com is the enterprise that is the most entertaining for Doğan Boyner and the one that makes her the happiest. She starts off the day with a busy schedule in her simply decorated office at Trump Towers. Other things that make her happy are the drawings her two daughters make for her. She elaborates about the drawings. She says she is a mother who spends time with her children, remarking, "I make time for my children. I also benefit from the advantages of the digital platform. Especially when it comes to shopping. I pick out clothes for my children in 30 minutes. This way, I can spend the time I would have spent if I'd gone out shopping with my children."

Among the things that excite her are the corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects she is involved in. Besides entrepreneurship, Doğan Boyner has achieved significant success in CSR projects and she tells us that her goal for the community mobilization that she initiated with the "Daddy, Send Me to School" campaign is to have every girl of elementary school age be enrolled at school. Doğan Boyner says that the objective of this CSR project is to bring the number of unenrolled schoolchildren to zero. She explains that the project has succeeded in equalizing the numbers of girls and boys at school, continuing to say, "So far, we have provided 11,100 girls with scholarships. We've completed the construction of 33 girls' dormitories. We built elementary schools in 12 villages that had no schools and also established 11 village schools. The biggest problem at this time is school attendance. Children get registered but that's it. In addition, the university entrance rates of girls are low. We're trying to see how we can help girls who stay in the dormitories and who are given scholarships. We help them in the academic branches they choose to go into. The Aydın Doğan Foundation has started giving out scholarships in engineering, medicine and law. We have spread out the campaign to include all of Turkey. We are now moving on ahead to reach our goals."

Positive discrimination is a topic that is included in company policies. Doğan Boyner says that in the hiring process, women are chosen over men when two candidates with the same experience vie for the same position. The goal of the company is to achieve a 50-50 per cent ratio between the number of men and women employees. She says that the number of employees, which is 1000 today, will be pushed up to 1600. When asked what kind of an executive she is, Doğan Boyner says, "I'm someone who likes her job. I prefer to work with people like me who also like their job." She continues: "I always say to my team, 'If you're not running to come to work in the morning and you'd rather be somewhere else, don't come in then.' What is important in being a manager or a leader is to see the potential in people and support them accordingly. The right leader is the person who clears the path for his employee. A leader is the person who offers the chance to take initiative. I'm a result-oriented person. I like to have problems clearly stated and discussed. My preference is transparency."

There are not many companies in the world that carry out the work that Hepsiburada.com has taken on. Amazon and Alibaba are two companies that execute the Hepsiburada.com model on a larger scale. Outside of these, there are also local players in countries such as India and Japan. The most striking of Hepsiburada.com's progress is in the mobile segment. Hepsiburada.com mobile applications are used by over 1 million active users in a month. This figure signifies an 87 per cent increase over the previous year. The number of downloads for the applications has reached 5 million. In the last 1.5 years, the platform's mobile revenues have increased three-fold. More than 70 per cent of weekend and holiday hepsiburada.com traffic and more than half of the orders placed belong to the use of the mobile site and mobile application. The application is the only e-commerce application that has received a five-star recommendation from users in the App Store. The Hepsiburada.com mobile application is among the most frequently downloaded applications and is at the top in its own category. Hepsiburada.com provides access to 1 million products in 27 different categories--from computers to smart phones and tablets, from books to automobile accessories, from sports equipment to kitchen supplies and diapers.

Interview: Fortune, June 2016,
Sule Laleli
Photographer: Muhsin Akgun