Turkey’s Leading Energy Company Tüpraş to Grow Stronger with Its Corporate Venture Capital Arm “Tüpraş Ventures”
Tüpraş, Turkey’s key player in energy industry, will take strength from its venture capital subsidiary “Tüpraş Ventures” to reach out to domestic and international technology startups, provide funding for technology initiatives that have the potential to shape future energy systems, nurture strategic cooperations and enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Embracing entrepreneurship as part of its corporate culture, Tüpraş follows its Strategic Transformation Plan to produce the energy of the future and transition into a carbon-neutral energy company by 2050. Now, the company is taking yet another step to lead the transformation in the energy industry.
Tüpraş has been efficiently managing both corporate innovation assets and external innovation resources for continuous growth and recently established Tüpraş Ventures to nurture strategic cooperations, enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and provide funding for technology initiatives that have the potential to shape energy systems of the future.
In line with Tüpraş Strategic Plan, Tüpraş Ventures will invest in domestic and international technology companies focusing on sustainable refining, biofuels, carbon management with a particular interest in zero-carbon electricity and green hydrogen, smart information technologies, Industry 4.0, energy efficiency, environment and recycling, and waste management.
Tüpraş Ventures will be investing in strategic focus areas across a wide region, particularly in North America and Europe, and will present startups with an opportunity to test and scale their technologies by offering extensive industry experience and know-how of Tüpraş.
Levent Zağra, Tüpraş Assistant General Manager for Innovation, Investments and Planningsaid: “We’ve seen through more than a year in our Strategic Transformation Plan, and we are adamant about achieving our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. We consider new technologies and business models as the key medium to drive our competitive power in our transformation journey. Venture capital investments create value for us while we invest in new business fields. We establish cooperations to foster entrepreneurship, innovation, open innovation and promote startups to support the businesses of today and tomorrow. We also test innovative technologies of domestic and international startups in our refineries to further expand our cooperation.”
Noting that they intend to closely monitor technological advances to build new partnerships and directly invest in promising companies that are set to create new business areas, Zağra added, “The establishment of Tüpraş Ventures is but an early step towards this goal. It will address our four focus areas - sustainable refining, biofuels, zero-carbon electricity, and green hydrogen - that will advance our corporate energy transformation and create value for Tüpraş.”
“We will identify new growth areas through open innovation”
Levent Zağra stated that they strive to instill a company-wide culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, support cultural transformation, and generate permanent value out of these efforts, and added: “We are actively promoting open innovation by being a part of domestic and international entrepreneurship ecosystems to add value to Tüpraş and to the entrepreneurs. Through open innovation, we aim to come up with innovative solutions to our in-house needs and identify new growth areas by closely monitoring recent technologies in energy transformation. We are always on the lookout for emerging technologies in Turkey and abroad and assess over a thousand ventures every year. We have been an investor in Emerald Technology Ventures, one of Europe’s leading energy funds, since 2020. We have collaborated with 32 startups so far. We also established cooperation with startups from over 10 countries in three continents, North America, Europe, and Asia. And as part of our internal efforts, we led startup-corporation collaborations, which involved the participation of more than 30 departments and over 120 internal stakeholders. We offered startups the opportunity to pilot their solution, carried out joint innovation projects, became their customers, and signed dedicated cooperation agreements.
For further information on Tüpraş Ventures: www.tuprasventures.com
About Tüpraş:
In addition to being Turkey’s largest industrial company and the leading player of the energy industry, Tüpraş is the seventh-largest refining company in Europe and one of the most complex refining companies in the Mediterranean basin. The company has an annual crude oil processing capacity of 30 million tons in its four refineries. Tüpraş also operates with its subsidiaries in electricity generation, marine and railway transportation, crude oil and oil products trading, technology and venture capital investment. In 2021, Tüpraş announced its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 alongside its long term Strategic Transformation Plan, which revolves around four business areas: sustainable refining, biofuels, zero-carbon electricity and green hydrogen. The company aims to lead the energy of the future and Turkey’s clean energy transformation. To read more on Tüpraş Strategic Transformation Plan: Strategy - Tüpraş (tupras.com.tr)