Founded as a “venture platform” for the purpose of investing in start-ups producing technology in “Smart City” field, Proline Ventures continues its investments without slowing down. Proline Ventures, which made a rapid entry into the ecosystem by making two investments totaling TRY 150.000 in two start-ups at ITU Seed in the past days, decided to invest in Connect-ION, which was founded to develop advanced technology products in autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and robotics fields. Within these three areas, in the first phase Connect-ION has primarily focused on the development of technologies that can transform all vehicles into driverless vehicles. The investment made by Proline Ventures in Connect-ION which is a start-up in Sakarya University’s Incubation Center pre-incubation program, is TRY 180,000.
Connect-ION draws attention as a start-up with the goal of transforming nearly one billion vehicles in the world into autonomous vehicles. With this model that can be applied to any vehicle, drivers can get many benefits. The first product of this plan is a device and application named as "driving assistant". The assistant, which facilitates the life of the drivers, prevents loss of time as well as economic losses. In line with this purpose, an in-vehicle device and an application that makes the device conveniently manageable via a smartphone are being designed. The ultimate goal, Connect-ION wants to achieve, is to put on market a “full autonomousization kit”. Under favour of this kit, non-autonomous vehicle owners will be able to have an autonomous vehicle after an easy mounting process without having to dispose of existing vehicle investments.
“Connect-ION can change the balance in the autonomous vehicle world”
“Autonomous vehicles technology brings many benefits for city planning activities such as reducing traffic accidents, air pollution and traffic congestion, etc. When we look from this perspective, we can foresee that the urban problems will decrease as more vehicles become autonomous. We believe that the solutions, Connect-ION plans to develop, are capable of changing the balance in the world of autonomous vehicles. We will provide coaching, mentoring, counselling, training and networking supports alongside of the financial investment we made. We have a strong belief that we can achieve good works together.” Hakan Metin Akgün, Proline Ventures Manager, said.
“Proline Ventures' support will carry us to our targets much faster”
Connect-ION Founder M. Talha Çuhadaroğlu also said, “With the support of Proline Ventures, we aim to set a strategic and visionary focus on our product family, and by doing so, we want to launch the products needed by using the product management methodologies of the world's best companies. We are planning to start setting up of the infrastructure for the first product of this family. Since the most important feature of the product is its user-friendly design, we are working diligently in the design phase. We developed first prototype of our product that can solve the problems of costumers, which is a milestone. We plan to give more detailed information about our product in the coming days. Proline Ventures' support will carry us to our targets much faster.”
“Proline Ventures will be mentioned most often in the coming days”
“We are pleased that Proline Ventures, which made a rapid entry into the investment world, has decided to invest in Connect-ION, a start-up that emerged from our university. The sectors in which start-ups such as Connect-ION aim to provide services are very specialized sectors. Unfortunately, investors who invest in these technologies are very few. We believe that Proline Ventures, as it is differentiated in the sector with its “SmartMix” investment model and being Turkey's the first and only smart cities venture platform, will be mentioned most often in the coming days.” Prof. Dr. Tahsin Engin, Sakarya Teknokent General Manager, said.
