KIBAR HOLDING IS TAKING STRONG STEPS TOWARDS 2025 TARGETS

January 2023

Kibar Holding, one of Turkey's well-established industrial enterprises, continues its support on sustainability and social gender equality non-stop. Kibar will contribute to increase the number of active women in investment and entrepreneurship by making this investment as an investor in AryaWIP, which is continuing its efforts to ensure that gender-balanced and tech-oriented firms gain a greater role in the ecosystem.

Kibar Holding broadens the scope of its initiatives for gender equality. A new step has been made to boost the participation of women in business life as part of Kibar Holding's 2025 Sustainability Strategy, which also includes ongoing projects supporting equal opportunity within the organization. By making an investment in Arya WIP, which was founded in 2013 with the collaboration of Arya Women Investment Platform, Türkiye İş Bankası (Işbank), and Maxis, with the mission of "transforming the world under the leadership of women," Kibar Holding will contribute to the solution of enabling more female entrepreneurs to access capital in order to expand their businesses.

"As Kibar Group, we are always committed to providing a respectful, fair, participatory, diversity-supportive and continuously developing business environment, supporting projects that promote social gender equality," said Haluk Kayabaşı, CEO of Kibar Holding, noting that women are supporting employment and projects for women as a signatory of the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs). In this regard, we have become an investor in Arya WIP, which focuses on women's economic participation and entrepreneurship. At the same time, our "We Are Equal" platform has been operating at full capacity, overseeing a variety of innovative projects with a responsibility to advance gender equality. Along with our initiatives for our 5,000 human resources, customer and supplier ecosystem, we also wanted to help women entrepreneurs.” he added.

We are a part of the solution to women's access to finance

CEO Kayabaşı continued his words as follows: “We came together around common goals with Arya WIP, which operates in Turkey, fueled by its female-dominated investor base, and supports gender-balanced early stage and series A initiatives. We are also proud to be a part of the solution for our women entrepreneurs access to finance."

Ahu Serter, one of the founders of Arya WIP, comments on Arya WIP: “Arya was created to seize an opportunity in a subject that people have not seen before but was late to assess and evaluate. What was the opportunity? Women, Turkish Women…

The importance of women and the advantages they can offer if they contribute as much to the gross product as men have come to light over the last ten years. Arya is a place where we can talk about how looking from a gender and diversity-oriented perspective will benefit the globe! Today, we are at a turning point. We aspire to be recognized as the first venture capital fund that focuses on gender-balanced investments globally, in addition to being a first in Turkey and the MENA region.

Women must alter their connection with money to demonstrate their uniqueness. So that we can distinguish between successful and unsuccessful. That's why we say, "Money Has No Gender." She made reference to her long-standing efforts to emphasize the value of gender balance.

By investing in venture firms that develop innovative applications and technologies, have simple scaling potential, can stand out from the competition, and have predictable exit opportunities, especially those in which women entrepreneurs are active as venture capital investments within the framework of capital market legislation, Arya Women Investment Platform aims to generate medium- and long-term value.