5 minutes with ... Mar 09, 2015

Five minutes with ... Necati Ertuğrul, CTO of Natek Bilişim

Bavaria's economy is full of life – and the people who live and work here make the biggest contribution to this. In our monthly “Five minutes with...” section, we introduce an interesting person from business and research. This month, we talked to Necati Ertuğrul, CTO of Natek Bilişim, a leading provider of IT security solutions in Turkey. Natek Bilişim recently opened its first subsidiary, NATEK GmbH in Garching, and plans to continue its expansion throughout Europe. The company has already outsourced some segments of its research and development activities to Bavaria.

Your company specialises in IT security solutions and plans to expand in Europe. What made you decide to invest in Bavaria?

The unparalleled location advantages, the very strong transportation infrastructure, the existence of a talented workforce, the international culture and the strong support from public and private authorities were the main reasons why NATEK chose the Munich area. Germany’s promising future and strong economy within the European Union were also key considerations for us. Putting all this together, Bavaria was the natural choice for us to start our expansion in Europe.


What type of support have you received?

We have received great support from Invest in Bavaria. They supported us in virtually everything, helping us locate our office and providing guidelines for finding the right accountant and lawyer. We contacted all local authorities with their coordination. With their help, everything ran very smoothly and was easy to handle. Our office is now in GATE Garching next to Technische Universität München (TUM), providing great opportunities for NATEK to integrate with the European business environment. Now GATE is supporting us in finding the right technology partners. Their interest and support so far has been remarkable.


What other services made you decide to open shop in Bavaria?

Excessive flights between Turkey and Germany were a key factor for us. The blue card scheme is unique and very efficient. The well-defined programme on offer was a key consideration in supporting our international workers.


What are your focus areas, and what steps will your subsidiary in Bavaria take next?

We currently offer products in the fields of security incident management, network access control, mobile device management, data leakage prevention, network & systems management, data encryption and energy distribution efficiency. At the moment, we are recruiting our local team. We also plan to develop new products from our German headquarters and to conduct all European operations from our German office.


What sights in Bavaria did you visit first? What destinations are on your agenda for the near future?

Just the BMW museum so far.

 

We have received great support from Invest in Bavaria. They supported us in virtually everything, helping us locate our office and providing guidelines for finding the right accountant and lawyer. We contacted all local authorities with their coordination. With their help, everything ran very smoothly and was easy to handle.