Sanofi Turkiye is collaborating with Turk Telekom’s corporate venture capital company TT Ventures for health-focused studies.
Under the umbrella of PharmUp Hub, Sanofi Turkiye signed an important cooperation with Turk Telekom’s corporate venture capital company TT Ventures that will strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the healthcare field. Within the scope of Sanofi Turkiye’s TT Ventures cooperation, potential startups will be able to benefit from the office workspaces offered by TT Ventures, the mentoring support, and the know-how to turn the ideas of startups into products and services. After the cooperation process between the two institutions, it is aimed to expand the platform with the participation of technoparks, joint incubation centers and the private sector.
The PharmUp Entrepreneurship Program, implemented by Sanofi Turkiye in 2019, has been successfully bringing together entrepreneurs from every field and sector who can develop solutions for the health sector for 3 years. As of 2022, the company started to work on transforming PharmUp into a Turkiye-based multi-stakeholder entrepreneurship platform in order to move the project forward and increase global competitiveness in the field of healthcare in our country and strengthen the innovation ecosystem. In this context, the PharmUp Hub Platform, one of Turkiye’s largest innovation interfaces in the field of digital health, was launched. Within the scope of the cooperation, it is aimed to support project development processes for entrepreneurs and to turn value-added innovation and technology-based projects into products by creating a scientific platform.
Sanofi Turkiye Country President and Sanofi Turkiye, Africa and Middle East Core Products President Cem Ozturk said, “Since 2019, we have been bringing together entrepreneurs from every field and sector that can develop solutions for the health sector with the PharmUp entrepreneurship program. As of this year, we have transformed the program into the PharmUp Hub innovation platform, which provides laboratories, thematic innovation programs, workshops, expert support and information resources to start-ups in cooperation with universities and incubators, as well as corporate partnerships. Our cooperation with TT Ventures is an important step towards realizing our goal. We are happy that we will create value for both the entrepreneurs in the field of health and the national economy with the support of this cooperation.”
Muhammed Ozhan, General Manager of TT Ventures, said: “As Turk Telekom’s corporate venture capital company, TT Ventures, we continue our efforts to contribute to the growth of the entrepreneurship ecosystem. We aim to contribute to the country’s economy by supporting initiatives with innovative products. To date, 104 startups have graduated from PILOT, the industry’s first startup acceleration program under TT Ventures, and 45 of these startups have received outside investment. On the other hand, as TT Ventures, we have invested in 13 different ventures. We especially focus on areas that will create synergy with Turk Telekom such as health, education, artificial intelligence, digital solutions, financial technologies, blockchain, IOT and ICT. In this sense, we attach great importance to this collaboration with Sanofi, an important global health company, in the field of digital health. We are happy to create new opportunities by supporting ideas that will add value to the health sector within the scope of PharmUp program through TT Ventures Venture Capital Fund and PILOT. In this context, we believe that this cooperation, which will start with Sanofi, will go outside of Turkiye and find a place in the global arena in the near future. As TT Ventures, we will continue to develop the entrepreneurship ecosystem by adapting our technological know-how to different projects, with the aim of being a bridge that opens startups to the world.”
Within the scope of Sanofi Turkiye PharmUp Hub entrepreneurship program, it continues to contribute to the entrepreneurship ecosystem with its collaborations with Başakşehir Living Lab, Teknopark İstanbul and Lokman Hekim University Health and Pharmaceutical Technology Center (LHUSTEK) and now with TT Ventures.
Source: Egirisim / Translated by Irem Yildiz