ABIGEM DM


: Mar 22, 2022


Looking for Partnership
About Me

Being an outcome of EU-Turkey Business Centres Project and a partner of Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) since 2008, East Marmara European Union Business Centre (ABİGEM EM), has a well-established background in entrepreneur and SME service delivery on the areas of capacity building, sustainability, and internationalisation.

As an affiliate of Kocaeli Chamber of Industry, the significance of ABİGEM EM stems from its ownership structure which consists of strong members of the business network and core business stakeholders in its respective region including the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey and 6 Chambers of Industry and Commerce with almost 60.000 obligatory members in total. ABİGEM EM, in this context, is a solid figure in the local, regional, and national SME service support ecosystem through its wide network of support organizations, universities, technology transfer offices, technology parks and more than 15 years of accrued experience.

The expertise areas of the Centre are mainly concentrated on;

  • Conducting entrepreneur, SME and stakeholder needs analysis,
  • Providing training, consultancy, and mentoring services to entrepreneurs,
  • Developing and delivering tailor-made trainings and advisory services for SMEs to improve their institutional capacity and competitiveness,
  • Developing and implementing projects for entrepreneurs and SMEs to improve their managerial and technical skills, facilitate access to finance, develop infrastructure, expand into new international markets, increase their resilience, and acquire the necessary information, knowledge, and competencies to innovate,
  • Leveraging innovation capabilities of SMEs and scale-ups through benchmarking their innovation management competencies and performances and providing road maps to better manage their innovation and digitization activities,
  • Organizing inward/outward company missions, brokerage events and international business matchmaking events.

ABİGEM East Marmara has carried out numerous training activities on entrepreneurship since its establishment and was the first consultancy business to deliver entrepreneurship trainings in Kocaeli region. ABİGEM also expanded its entrepreneurship training programmes to other regions such as Iznik, Gemlik, Samsun, Tekirdag, Sakarya and most recently to Bursa where 90 Syrian refugees were trained, and 12 refugees received mentorship within the scope of ILO’s “Entrepreneurship, Training and Mentorship Support Services for Syrian Refugees and Host Communities in Turkey” program. Besides, ABİGEM EM provided training, consultancy, and mentoring services to entrepreneurs through ScaleEMup project which was a sub-component of the COSME project carried out through the EEN consortiums.

With its staff of 10 and an expert pool of over 1,000 short term experts, ABİGEM EM has collaborated with institutions and organisations such as Turkish Employment Agency (İŞKUR), Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and Municipalities in various entrepreneurship training programs serving approximately 12.240 entrepreneurs to date.

Within the scope of EEN services, ABİGEM EM has provided internationalisation support services to help companies access international markets and business opportunities through missions and B2B business matchmaking events such as MATCH4INDUSTRY organized every year since 2012. In terms of sustainability services, the Centre has delivered awareness building seminars and training activities and provided advise on specific areas such as access to finance, EU legislations and standards, certifications schemes required in the Single Market and beyond, business models and processes to raise performance and efficiency. ABİGEM EM has also exchanged information and experience through Automotive sector group and Women Entrepreneurship thematic group memberships. The Centre has encouraged collaborative open innovation through awareness seminars and trainings on Innovation Management, EU programmes offered through EU and TUBITAK cooperation such as Horizon 2020 and other EU Programmes supporting the design and development of new technologies and products such as EUREKA programmes.

 

ABİGEM EM has actively served to SMEs through European added value projects contributing to the benefit of SMEs in the region and their EU counterparts. Examples to such projects include;

  • PRISM Environment; aimed at supporting small businesses in assessing and improving their environmental impact. PRISM project was conducted by 11 partners of the Enterprise Europe Network from 10 countries.
  • STOP4BUSINESS; aimed at promoting and supporting advanced business cooperation activities focused on business matching between companies and research institutes to facilitate business, market access, technology transfer and research agreements, to engender growth and to secure employment. STOP4BUSINESS project was conducted by 16 partners of Europe Enterprise Network from 13 countries.

The Centre also provided technical assistance in Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) projects such as Establishment of Common Use Facility (CUF) under the Operation of "Big Partnership of Small Industrialists", Bafra “Business and Export Development Unit” and KUYAP “Increasing the Adaptability of SME Employees and Employers to Changes in the Global Economy”. The most recent projects the Centre has participated include technical assistance at UNDP’s “Covid-19 Resilience and Response Project”

The Centre aims to assist its clients by taking part in projects related to carbon footprint, digitalisation and entrepreneurship.

Keywords and matching areas:

 Accelerators
 Entrepreneurship and SMEs
 Innovation
 Single Market
 Start Up
 Erasmus+

Ideas in Progress

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