Hello everyone!
I'm Ege Seyar and my friend Mertkan Karaca. We are prep students at the Turkish-German University. My major is mechanical engineering and Mertkan's is business. As we are interested in entrepreneurship, we participated in the Big Bang Startup Challenge, which took place on December 7-8, 2022. Big Bang is an event that brings entrepreneurs and investors together and creates a networking environment. The Big Bang event organized by Istanbul Technical University Arı Teknokent was very exciting for both of us. It was also the first entrepreneurship event I have attended.
Big Bang Startup Challenge
Big Bang was held at Uniq Istanbul with the participation of 132 startups. In the 2-day event, startups introduced themselves; They explained their goals and objectives with their presentations. At the same time, we had the opportunity to talk to them at the stands of the startups. We talked to entrepreneurs about how they develop themselves, the challenges of entrepreneurship and what they want in the future. We observed how different the world of entrepreneurship is there. We were amazed by the diversity and creativity of the initiatives. Our favorite initiatives were Hebunk, Walkersapp, Taykopil and ActiveWear 2.0
HEBUNK:
Hebunk is an initiative that sees the shortcomings of electric scooters, which have been widely used recently, and designs hydrogen scooters. While the charging time of electric scooters is between 5-8 hours, hydrogen scooters can be charged in only 5 minutes. While electric scooter users have difficulty going uphill, hydrogen scooters have no difficulty in going uphill.
TAYKO:
Tayko is a company that produces lithium-ion batteries. They use the element boron, which is abundant in Turkey, in the batteries they design, and unlike other batteries, they contain herbal binders, not chemical binders, and thus produce more environmentally friendly batteries. Takyo Company produces CR2032 type batteries, which are not produced in Turkey. These batteries are used in phones, smart watches, electric vehicles and many other electronic devices.
WALKERS:
Walkers is an app that earns points as you walk. One can shop at Walkers Market with these points. This app also has a donation system. A person can turn every 5000 steps into donations by choosing one of the options such as rice, seedlings, and food.
ActiveWear 2.0 works in the field of wearable technology. This initiative, which excited us the most when we first saw it, is the first and only initiative in its field in Turkey. Wearable technology is an emerging industry in the world. ActiveWear 2.0 designs smart sportswear and mobile applications that monitor and, when necessary, warn the health data, muscle and nerve movements and carbon footprint of its users, with sensor technology integrated into innovative fabrics. The clothes feature innovative self-cleaning fabric technology that can convert solar energy into electrical energy. These features of clothing help people reduce their own carbon footprint.
ActiveWear 2.0 also has a mobile app. With the mobile application, users can observe their own performance and reach the recommended exercise and nutrition styles.
Özgül Dalkılıç, together with İTÜ Çekirdek, started the unique project called ActiveWear 2.0 in Turkey to take the 5-year-old TightClub Performance Clothing brand, of which she was the founder, one step further with technology, and established the R&D company at İTÜ Arı Teknokent on January 25, 2023.
Textile, electronics and computer engineers; with its interdisciplinary team consisting of designers, doctors and athletes, it continues its efforts to design smart sportswear integrated into the mobile application.
PURPOSE:
To reduce the carbon footprint while increasing the performance of the new generation.
With this project; It is planned to create a sustainable and innovative sportswear brand and trend that will increase performance and create awareness of reducing carbon footprint for the new generation. While doing this, being more visible, more useful and more player is among the biggest goals of the team.
With the mobile application integrated into the clothes, users will be able to observe the graphs of increase in their performance with the virtual identities they will create, and they will be able to organize encounters with other community members in physical and virtual environments. Thus, while increasing the performance of the end user, the awareness of reducing the carbon footprint will be expanded.
With the mobile application; A platform is being created where users can be informed about performance activities, access exercise and nutrition recommendations, and even get recommendations from physical therapists.
SUSTAINABILITY:
Users will step into a sustainable and active future by controlling their own health data and not engaging the health sector.
On the other hand, it is aimed to spread the awareness of reducing the individual carbon footprint by following the carbon footprint of the users.
OUR INTERNSHIP PROCESS
Currently, Mertkan and I are interning at ActiveWear 2.0, which we met at Bigbang. Our team is very hardworking and ambitious, it's really fun when we work together and there are times when we all learn new things. We meet and work as a team at Arı 3 in ITU 2 days a week. We also have online trainings on a certain day of the week and these trainings are really instructive.
Wearable technology is a rapidly rising industry, although it has only just emerged. It may sound a bit like a science fiction movie, but I think this technology will play a big role in the market in a short time.
We saw the fast-growing world of entrepreneurship in Turkey at the BigBang event of Istanbul Technical University, and we feel very lucky to be able to enter this world thanks to ActiveWear 2.0.
We are very happy to be here as we want to make a venture in the future.
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