Less than a week after I wrote about Luxembourg Ambassador Georges Faber's remarks that Northern European countries, including his own country, could be the gateway for Turkish companies to enter Europe, news came confirming this. Gülman Holding is becoming a partner in a real estate company in Sweden. Polat Gülman, Chairman of the Holding's Board of Directors, could not hide his excitement about this new investment, although he said that he could not give the name of the Swedish company before finalizing the agreement because it is publicly traded. ‘This is the first time we are investing in such a corporate company,’ said Gülman, ’With this investment, we are entering a field of real estate that we have never done before. We are becoming a partner of a company operating in the field of commercial real estate. We will announce the details around September’. Thereupon, I reminded Polat Gülman that they are more prominent in the real estate and renewable energy sectors and that they are generally interested in domestic projects in these fields. He stated that this partnership in Sweden was not their first overseas investment in real estate and started to explain: ‘We have previously made some investments in real estate in the UK, Germany, Italy, Denmark and Norway. But these were test investments within the scope of warm-up tours. Now we have taken a more long-term step. This will continue.’
He then mentioned that Gülman Holding, which has grown in trade and real estate, has recently undergone a structural transformation. He stated that the venture capital company Gülman VC was added to the Holding's activities in this context. It turns out that Polat Gülman is a complete unicorn hunter. The Holding, founded by his father Kemal Gülman, has been expanding abroad for quite some time with its investments in early-stage technology companies. To date, he has invested in 238 companies in 28 countries. Emphasizing that almost all of these investments were made through funds, Gülman said that his interest in venture capital funds was his father's idea. ‘My father told me, ‘You enter this field, venture capital is a risk, take this risk’. He is younger than me’, Polat Gülman summarised his current situation with the words “I have no regrets, but I know that I am at a precarious point”.
I asked Polat Gülman about his experience in venture capital and received an exciting response: ‘In venture capital, there is a rapid change in the favorite investment areas, although not as fast as in the fashion world. For example, this year's theme is the health sector, biotechnology, and medical technology developments. A few years ago, artificial intelligence was in vogue.’
According to Polat Gülman, another fashionable topic in venture capital these days is longevity; long and quality life. Gülman said that they are examining health-tech companies that develop health technologies related to the central nervous system and heart and that they will soon enter a German fund focusing on initiatives in this field.
Let's wish them well, after all, the end of the rope will touch all of us.