Farplas

Ahu Serter:

Fark Holding President – Founder of Fark Labs

Mrs. Serter, what areas stand out among the startup investments made through Fark Holding’s F+ Ventures venture capital arm? And why?

Startups that offer value-added products and services stand out in the mobility ecosystem. The automotive industry is changing, and as part of that change, it is necessary to anticipate the areas that will grow in the future and invest earlier.

With our R&D and Innovation Center Fark Labs, we pursue innovation in automotive and mobility on a global scale and invest through F+ Ventures. Automotive software and electronic technologies are at the forefront of new innovation areas in the automotive industry. For this reason, we focus on the mobility ecosystem and startups that offer products with added value for the mobility ecosystem. Our main goal is to invest in these initiatives and combine them with the experience and product portfolio of Farplas, our flagship company within the holding, to offer products that add value to our customers.

After the Büyütech investment, now the investment in Saykal Elektronik is on your agenda. What sector is Saykal in?

Saykal Elektronik is a technology company that develops and manufactures advanced detection, recognition, and imaging systems for strategic and scalable areas on a global scale, especially for the automotive industry. It operates in the field of electronic technologies, the fundamental building block of the mobility ecosystem. These technologies include sensor technologies, control and communication technologies, and motor drive technologies. In sensors, in particular, the company stands out for its work on millimeter-wave radar technologies. We believe that these technologies, which are still new to the automotive industry, will play an important role in the localization strategies of our country’s automotive industry while increasing the share of technology exports.

What do you think about the startups in the automotive industry and the establishment of internal ventures? What is Fark Labs’ contribution to these initiatives?

The pace at which automakers are investing in or acquiring new technologies and startups has accelerated significantly over the past eight years. The main reason behind is innovation. To keep up with the major changes in the automotive industry, it is necessary to be fast and carry out innovative projects. Startups are very agile and fast in developing new technologies and innovative projects. Therefore, they are very important and need to be supported. 

As a group, we have pioneered this trend, first with the establishment of F+ Ventures and then our R&D and Innovation Center Fark Labs. With our offices in Korea, France as well as our new offices in China and America, we have also become known worldwide.

What do you think makes you successful?

Our openness to collaboration with companies in the ecosystem, our knowledge of the startup and global investment culture, and our system of sharing rather than controlling make us the right partner when it comes to collaborations. When you take these as the starting point, it becomes easier to achieve successful results, as in the case of our internal initiative DUCKT exit, which provides solutions for parking, charging, and locking scooters.

You never stop, what’s next?

The next step is to set up F+ Ventures’ second fund, which will also be open to investments from other organizations. With this fund, we will continue to invest in technology companies in Turkey that operate in this field, thus investing in our vision to establish these companies globally. We invite all companies and investors who want to invest in this vision to cooperate with us.

Emin Ataç

Farplas CEO

Mr. Ataç, you also play an important role in the Saykal investment. In fact, you will represent Saykal Holding one-to-one. What has motivated you?  

With this investment as one of the steps we have taken in parallel with Fark Holding’s strategy in recent years, we will now be able to develop and produce locally all the sensors needed for the autonomization of electric vehicles. Our biggest motivation is therefore to be able to offer multiple solutions to our customers by combining our experience in the design and production of plastics with the solutions of Saykal Elektronik, which we consider very successful in the design and production of electronic parts.

What kind of innovations do you foresee in products and services after the investment?

We plan to offer our customers a wider range of solutions by combining Saykal’s design and development knowledge with Farplas’ professional manufacturing expertise. 

In particular, we aim to make progress in areas such as driver monitoring with in-cab radar and camera systems, and child detection systems. Other safety solutions such as sensors outside the cab, blind spot detection and collision warning systems, ECUs, and communication solutions are also among the areas we want to work on. 

Ömer Burhanoğlu

Fark Holding Board Member – CEO

Mr. Burhanoğlu, how will Saykal contribute to Farplas?

In the automotive sector, the focus is on autonomous vehicles and autonomous driving technologies. Not only cars, but all vehicles in the mobility ecosystem are becoming intelligent, connected, and self-determining.  For this reason, sensors, detectors, control systems, safety solutions, autonomous driving software, Big Data, IOT, precise location, and communication solutions within the scope of autonomous vehicles are the future of this sector. 

Saykal Elektronik will help Farplas to become a local supplier of high-tech, smart and connected systems taking it beyond just a supplier of polymer-based technological systems. This way, Farplas will pursue its vision to become an automotive supplier that designs and develops systems and produce multiple solutions that make our world safer. It will integrate modern electronic systems with polymer technologies.

Yücel Saykal

Saykal Electronics CEO

Mr. Saykal, how your work and business volume will change in the new period with Fark Holding’s investment?

With this investment, we will expand our production infrastructure and team. Our business strategy will continue to focus on value-added automotive electronics production. With the support of Fark Holding, we aim to increase our business volume and expand our customer portfolio by strengthening our weak areas. 

Fark Holding is one of the few investors in our country that invests in new technologies and anticipates the changes in the automotive industry. Its vision and aspirations will enable us to further develop our vision and strategy and become a significant technology company on a global scale. 

What growth momentum do you expect from this investment? With Fark Holding’s extensive business network and manufacturing experience as well as the global investment vision of Fark Labs, the holding’s R&D and innovation center, we dream of becoming a major actor in automotive electronics within the next five years