50 entrepreneurs across Turkey applied for the Startup Challenge, and the ideas of 10 entrepreneurs competed in the main event after the preliminaries. The organization was held at Aksigorta Headquarters. The winner of the competition was rewarded with an Apple MacBook Pro, the first runner-up won a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and the second runner-up an Apple Watch.  Moreover, 10 start-ups that passed the preliminaries received a 3-month mentorship award from Hackquarters.

Metin Demirel, Assistant General Manager of Information Technologies and Digital at Aksigorta, gave the opening speech of the Startup Challenge, and said: “The world is going through a transformation process, from business strategies to production. Companies will only be successful by keeping up with this transformation. Start-ups are the most important indicators of this transformation. It is not a coincidence that today’s biggest five companies were founded in garages as start-ups. They are a reference to what the labor force will become in the future. Therefore, we listen to start-ups in order to bring the digital transformation in our corporate structure one step ahead, to develop our business processes with new ideas; and we look for ways to develop businesses together.” 

Organized under the cooperation between Aksigorta and Hackquarters, Startup Challenge served as a platform to model the product and service experiences of digital insurance’s future. Moreover, participants found a chance to discuss innovative ideas that will transform the insurance market in Insurtech, Digital Health and New Technologies fields.