Name: How the 'Amazon of the East' Is Preparing for the Next Decade
Uploaded: 2019-12-23
Duration: 14 min 48 s
Description: Hepsiburada’s Hanzade Doğan-Boyner joins Fortune’s Global Forum.

How the 'Amazon of the East' Is Preparing for the Next Decade

Leadership

Hepsiburada’s Hanzade Doğan-Boyner joins Fortune’s Global Forum.

so the Turkish online retailer Hep C Burrata has been dubbed the Amazon of the East, selling everything from Elektronik to food and toys and books and other consumer packaged goods. Despite Turkey's economic instability, the company has managed to thrive and its founder and chair a woman who, by the way, has joined us an M P W events. We've always been delighted to have her. She sees a slowing economy as an opportunity as customers moved from offline toe online to share her views of e commerce and entrepreneurship. Please welcome Hans Dada Dyan Boner and fortunes. Claire's Hillman Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Nina mentioned. You have Well, you have a really interesting personal narrative, and I'm gonna try to sort of briefly cover it. You your father owned, owned and publishes one of Turkey's top newspaper. So big family business. Um, and you briefly work for the family business. But you decided to break off from it. And that was maybe arguably, ah, harder path to take to start barada by buying up a very small electronics seller. Can you talk about that decision? Why did you break free from the past? that was essentially set for you. Sure, I start working at my father's company, who was at the time the largest media conglomerate in our region. I had a vision off hop turned the traditional media company into the 20% communication company. Things didn't go as I planned. There was a little resistance. Culture didn't work with what I wanted to do. It was a difficult decision. I moved away. I moved out and started my own company. I've got lucky. It all turned out good. I'm happy I did what I did. Do you ever feel like you had to prove yourself once you took that path that you were sort of in competition with the family business? To some degree, I have always seen drivel. So my drive did not come after I left the company. It was probably my drive that pushed me up off the company. So you're often helps. Murat is also called often called the Amazon of Turkey or the Amazon of the East. How do you feel? And I have some numbers. So? So in 2018 you had nearly $800 million annual revenue. What do you want? Track for this year. I mean, we're growing a 60 70% a year, so we're obviously passed those numbers in terms of seasonal model. Yes, we are very similar. We have every tale arm or as well as a marketplace arm where the days are driven to start fighting more Chuck A. But I mean, we are fundamentally very different in our soul compared toe the global giants like Amazon. We are like Amazon picks cry in disrupting almost Exterminating retail. Whereas we take pride in helping the digitalization process off potato, we are not destructor. We believe we have grown to skate through cooperation our partnerships with retained in the it is very critical for our platform. So in terms of business model, Yes, off course, we are similar. But in terms of our soul, our culture, the way we do business is different at brother, we always say this is where Silicon Valley made with Graham Bazaar because it once hand, we use machine learning technologies A I to improve our search engines to improve our recommendation engines to enhance our picking algorithms that our operations center On the other hand, we are commercial. We are straight man When we sit with our suppliers with our merchants, we know what they need and reform true, a powerful partnership. So earlier this year, in an interview, you said, You sell everything but groceries. And now, since then you've introduced groceries. So what's what's next? What's the next thing you're gonna sell or business? You're gonna introduce your Let me tell you about the grocery. For many years we looked into grocery, and I've always that foot is a different ball game. The unit economics doesn't add up. How do you deliver a package off? You know, $10 within one hour and make a profit on it. However, we have find a way where unit economics works and we find a partnership with a carport, and we use their stores to deliver. With next are it's a very large selection from fish meat toe oppose to some important non food items that our customers might want it instantly. It's a big move. We are very excited about this. We believe it will enhance the growth off our platform significantly and what is next. When we think about the future off our business, the team that comes up it's about online off lot conversion, and we're talking about a seamless integration off online and offline, not conversion, seamless integration. So, you know, we know by online people flying that's almost a primitive way off What's coming forward for the next generation? The differentiation off, those two words are becoming Blore Er, and we will see that, you know, instant buying Just, you know, stores that you just go with your phone and the product gets delivered to your home within one are. So that's the team that comes up and off course. Aye, aye is also changing. We get to know the customers went anymore. What problem do you see you have now that you think I could help solve Or how do you know what the next implementation of it for you? Sure, when we talk about a I the problems that I will solve the problems that a I Well, I say we need to think Ah, both off them simultaneously and e I mean, a I basically is a better use it off our data. The data is we sit on big data. We you know, our every move is being collected and then have you formulate that data toe to understand exactly what you want and to give you exactly what you need, which is the benefit off a I in terms of equal murder. On the downside, off course there's privacy issues and more regulations that are coming that we need to think about, right. I'm gonna go to questions in a minute. But before I do that, you mentioned regulation. And when you talk about the Amazons of the World and platform like yours, that want to be all things to all people that's coming under more and more scrutiny from regulators, how do you feel about this movement or the idea of breaking up big tech? I mean, I I'm not shy to say that we do have to think about regulations. There is a about confrontation. There is, you know, power, confrontation, and then the usage off public data. A Europe is more advanced than us in terms of introducing some regulate regulations, but and also there is, you know, the rich globalization. We've got the benefits of globalization, but on the other hand, received certain camp it cos everything taxes in certain countries, which I believe needs farther regulations introduced so you know, when we do our business, we do think about the impact off our actions to our nation's thio global economy. And we're not, You know that That is going to come in my way. And I support part regulations. Off course. It needs to be done thinking with the global benefit off the rig regulations. It should be done correctly. But I'm I expect more to come. You have any questions from the audience? One right here in front. If you could wait for the mike and the red suit. Thank you. And if you don't mind introducing yourself standing, my name is Mei and I'm from Washington, D. C. Recently, Nike has known that they are no longer going to be available on Amazon. They would like to go direct to consumer. That is a trend the friends are seeking. In order. Thio get closer access and data. So what do you think? Um, you're poised to do in the competition where in the future, a lot of the sales will come from, um, friends directly to consumers. Yes, it is true. Certain certain brands and wants to go direct to the consumer. And I believe that right strategy for certain brands. On the other hand, we have recently signed a partnership agreement with Apple, which we became. We always fault Apple products, but through this partnership we are the only platform that's works directly with Apple. They do their launches on our platform. They do their strongest promotions on our platform. So if we don't see it as a threat because we don't have toe have every single brand on our platform, the retail market is large enough. It's growing for us two to work with some brands, and some brands are You know, that right strategy. They can go directly, which has a lot off course and complications. It's not easy to create. We have 150 million visits a month to our platform. It's not easy for any single brand to create that kind off. But if that they want to take the challenge, I think they should. We have another question right here. Congratulations. Best Rajendra, chairman of Cal Collect um, in the year nine off Amazon, they been literally about 80% of their total revenues of on the technology in the development of the technology stack. How do you, um, are addressing your technology, road map and hardy developing technology skills for the data and the guy and overall, the warehousing and distribution technology. Sure way. We have three life around these centers in Turkey that we offer it a really tech company at heart technology's. From when you look at our marketing department, you will see the majority off employees having engineers quickly. So we're a technology company. Everything we do is driven by technology, and we do invest heavily in tow technology to build up our platform and to announce a ll the future. You have a really interesting initiative that speaks to the reach of your platform with women entrepreneurs. Tell us, Tell us what you're doing with sure. Two years ago we looked at our platform. I only I think 1% off at the revenues the G m e off the platform was coming from. And the price is that where that are owned by woman and we want to do something real, something that will have a real impact in sport off woman and trainers. And we've launched a program called Technology Power. Toa Woman and Children are, and it's a very solid program, basically as a woman entrepreneur. You come to us, retrain you. We know we show you have to use digital marketing tools were on board your product. Three off charge. We give you three delivery we give you in our algorithms off by Bach. We advanced it. You. So basically, if you're a woman and Turner, you're telling the same kind of product. You will have an advantage off. Coming first versus other products. We promote these entrepreneurs on our home page. And when you reach toe 50,000 tl a river near you graduate from the program and new woman come. And currently 4000 woman and her nerves are in our program. A 9% off jammy comes from woman and trainer. It did have an immense impact. I'm so proud of it. All right. So Happy way will continue to support the great great note to end on. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.