Where will a company that has an annual turnover of US$ 1 billion and that grows annually by 250 percent in average be in five years?

Recently, the 25 fastest growing companies in Turkey were announced under the leadership of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB). The companies that made it onto the list are available at this link: http://bit.ly/rqTiWL. The list involves companies that demonstrated the fastest growth performance during the 2008-2010 period. Did you know that the average annual growth of the Turkey 25 companies over this three-year period was 250 percent? Or have you heard that the total annual turnover of these companies is almost worth US$ 1 billion? Did you know that their employment grew by 143 percent and reached around 5000? I think we have not been mentioning this sufficiently. This week, let me tell you briefly about the Turkey 25 companies and share with you the impressions I got comparing the Turkey 25 companies with the America 25 companies.

When assessing Turkey’s performance, we must think like this: Where will a company that has an annual turnover at US$ 1 billion and that grows annually by 250 percent on average be in five years? This performance indeed is what enables Turkey to shine like a star. But we have not thought through what this performance implies. We must not neglect the entrepreneurial energy of Turkey while drawing attention to the pit ahead of us. What can I say? Turkey has companies that challenged the global economic crisis. We are still discussing the negative impacts of the crisis on the Turkish economy. However, one thing is clear: the crisis did not hit or even get close to the Turkey 25 companies.

This is the first conclusion I drew from the Turkey 25 project: Turkey had many companies that performed impressively during the global economic crisis. The period between 2008 and 2010 marked the period during which the impact of the first global crisis first hit. 2009 was particularly a bad year for Turkey. Production performance recovered during 2010. Therefore, these figures helped us assess the performance of companies compared to the pre-crisis period from a different perspective.

The second point: The diversity of companies that participated in the Turkey 25 contest was impressive. Thanks to the chamber system, companies not only from mature industrial centers like Istanbul and Izmir but from all around Anatolia took part in the contest. The Turkey 25 winning list has six companies from Ankara, ten from Istanbul, two from Izmir, three from Kocaeli, one from Kayseri, two from Kahramanmaraş, and one from Osmaniye. Moreover, the winning companies were not only from a small number of sectors; there are both old and new technology firms on the list. How must we interpret this picture? In my consideration, this is evidence that Turkey does not have star sectors, but has star companies in almost all sectors. The potential to develop star companies in almost all sectors gives a message about how the Turkish economy can grow in the near future. I, in this context, have been thinking that we are on the eve of a new period during which the need for venture capital in Turkey will grow.

Let me talk about the third point. INC Magazine has announced the fast growth firms in the US. The list for 2011 is available at the following link: http://www.inc.com/inc5000/list/2011. The companies on the US list are both larger than and growing more rapidly than the Turkey 25 companies. In Turkey, the traditional sectors are dominant whereas new-economy companies are dominant in the US. Looking at the list, I could not help but note down the to-do’s for Turkey in the near future. We have a lot to do. So far, we have managed to change the structure of the Turkish economy successfully, but have failed to furnish peoples with skills and enrich them. Now, the structural transformation of the Turkish economy depends on our ability to do these things. This is the third conclusion l have drawn.

The average age of the Turkey 25 companies is ten years. That of the companies on the list of Istanbul Chamber of Industry, on the other hand, is around thirty. Turkey 25 represents the future of Turkey. Now, it is time for comparisons and analyses. We have a lot of homework to do.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 13.12.2011