Istanbul, Türkiye
Core Strengths: * Driving Innovation: Pioneering business growth and operational efficiency with emerging technologies & AI. * Scaling Ventures: Utilizing entrepreneurial, data-driven strategies to scale high-traffic platforms from scratch. * Crisis Management: Solving complex technical and operational problems under pressure. * Change Leadership: Leading cross-border teams through corporate change, mergers, and market disruptions. * Growth Acceleration: Driving rapid growth and technological development using resource-efficient tactics. * PropTech Domain Expert: Deep expertise in property technologies, big data pipelines, and real estate intelligence. Mehmet Erkek is an engineer, executive, and entrepreneur with 25 years of international experience building data-driven products and scaling technology companies across Hong Kong, the UAE, and Turkiye. Mehmet began his career at ISI Emerging Markets (Euromoney), rising to Technology Manager overseeing products for Turkiye, Sub-Saharan Africa, and MENA. Later, as Senior Project Manager at CEICData, he managed global technology initiatives across Chile and Hong Kong, gaining extensive experience in multicultural environments. He later, Co-founded of REIDIN.com (in Dubai,UAE) and Zingat.com (in Turkiye), where he led the design and development of pioneering real estate data science platforms—introducing industry-firsts such as property price indices, automated home valuation, AI-based recommender engines, and AI-driven image processing solutions. At Zingat, a property classifieds platform, he served as CTO, COO, and later CEO, guiding the company through rapid growth, acquisition by Property Finder, and merger with HepsiEmlak, one of Turkiye’s largest real estate marketplaces. He continues to advise REIDIN.com and mentor startups at İTÜ Çekirdek, Turkiye's leading and largest incubation center and other incubation programs. Fluent in English, Spanish, and Turkish (with working knowledge of French, Persian, and Chinese (Mandarin), he has strong interests in languages, etymology, outdoor sports, music(composer), big data, and AI/ML.
Mentoring Startups at Istanbul Technical University Çekirdek Incubation Center. ITU Çekirdek, which was established by ITU and ITU ARI Teknokent in 2012 and drew strength from ITUNOVA TTO, has funded 2.424 start-ups and 5.432 entrepreneurs to date. Supporting many projects from financial technologies and health technologies to enhanced reality applications and hardware projects, ITU Çekirdek is a wide entrepreneurship platform that brings its more than 40 stakeholders together with entrepreneurs, companies, angel investors and professionals.
Evaluating eligibility of Technology Projects for TUBİTAK's funding program. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) is the leading agency for management, funding and conduct of research in Turkey. It was established in 1963 with a mission to advance science and technology, conduct research and support Turkish researchers. The Council is an autonomous institution and is governed by a Scientific Board whose members are selected from prominent scholars from universities, industry and research institutions.
Empowering Information and Trust in the Property Industry Using Technology and Data.
Responsible for operational excellence.
Zingat.com is a real estate information and marketing platform that brings together property professionals and consumers. Zingat was founded in 2015 by Doğuş Holding and REIDIN. Value Delivered: * Co-founded Zingat.com * Led develoment of company's entire product, intranet and technology platform from scratch. * Wrote the specs of platform and designed the architecture of the whole system. * Followed lean startup principles & led agile transformation of the company. * Built R&D department. * Initiated and completed many Data Science based innovative projects.
REIDIN is the world's first Real Estate Information Company focusing mainly on Emerging Markets. REIDIN saves property professionals resource, time and money by providing hard to get real estate data and information. Value Delivered: * Co-founded REIDIN.com in Dubai in 2007 and Leading Data & Technology teams since then. * Built company's entire infrastructure, technology platform & web products from scratch. * Initiated and led projects to create real estate data intelligence platforms, real estate related indices & tools to make smart decisions for industry professionals. * Managed 2 major technology & product transitions to keep up with latest technology trends and market conditions. * Levereged innovation to build sustainability. * Brought in GIS technologies and created competitive GIS products. *Initiated and completed many unique Data Science projects. * Led company's Big Data transformation.