While digital transformation continues at full speed in the world, one of the areas most affected by this change is the retail sector. We wanted to pioneer the digital transformation of different retail companies which have 100.000s of employees at many countries and in which we do shopping every day with MediaMarkt in Turkey.In the past 3 years, as Hackquarters, we came together with Turkey's and the world's most important companies. We have arranged dozens of events and programs for them to strengthen together, combining their innovation strategy with promising startups. This week, together with MediaMarkt, one of the largest electronic retailers in the world, we launched the MediaMarkt Startup Challenge and tried to create potential collaborations by bringing 11 startups with the valuable jury members from different companies.

By combining the program with MediaMarkt in Germany Retailtechhub, startups appeared on the scene to win global customers in Turkey. The most appreciated attempt at the event was Buy Buddy.In addition to Buy Buddy, Udentify and Pacer also got the chance to demo their services with MediaMarkt, Tekzen and other retail companies. I hope the relationships that started with this event will take the startups to the next level.

To briefly mention all the initiatives participating in the event:

Ulak, which offers private courier service to a person (or company),Snapbuy, which scans the images in the companies' catalogs and steers to the purchase directly,Bead, which increases the energy efficiency of buildings as well as analyzes the data acquired with its sensor,Pacer, which makes companies' learning processes fun and efficient,Buy Buddy, which offers the opportunity to eliminate the problem of waiting on cash queue with mobile payment and analyze the product data.Gamification-based shopping application Catchman,Udentify, which gives the opportunity to analyze physical data by analyzing store customers with cameras,Augmented reality (AR) based remote assistance application Mixoper,Octovan, the assistant in transportation,Datapare, which analyzes the competitor products and data, andReachpeople who can make predictive customer analysis on websites.

MediaMarkt Startup Challenge Winners are Announced!