Accelerate agri-tech ventures to transform food systems
Nurol Holding A.Ş.
SKD TürkiyeSummary
An eleven-month acceleration programme paired corporate mentors with women-led agri-tech ventures, strengthening business models and opening a direct route to investment review.
Context
Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)
The company is a diversified holding operating in construction, defence, industry and financial services, with more than 13,000 employees.
Climate change and food security are being addressed largely by early-stage ventures with the right technology and the wrong balance sheet. Agricultural technology start-ups can demonstrate water, carbon or waste benefits in a pilot, then stall because the business model is not investable, the founders have no route into corporate networks, and the pressure of running an early-stage company is carried alone.
Women-founded ventures face that gap more sharply, since access to mentoring, investor introductions and corporate procurement channels is unevenly distributed.
The company's response was to put corporate resources — employee expertise, network access and an investment evaluation route — behind a structured acceleration programme rather than to sponsor an event or make a donation. The programme was delivered with the Turkish Entrepreneurship Foundation (GİRVAK), which brought programme design, selection, monitoring and impact measurement capability that a holding company does not have in-house (1). The holding's sustainability reporting is subject to independent third-party external assurance (2).
Location of the initiative: Türkiye, with participating entrepreneurs from İstanbul, Ankara, Kayseri and Mersin
Solution
The programme is an eleven-month acceleration cycle for early-stage ventures in sustainable agriculture and agricultural technology whose founder or co-founder is a woman. It ran from May 2025 to April 2026 and combined orientation, a bootcamp, one-to-one mentoring, psychosocial support, ecosystem meetings and a Demo Day.
What distinguishes it from a standard accelerator is the composition of the support. Alongside business development, the programme works on impact-oriented thinking, systems change and psychosocial resilience, on the reasoning that early-stage failure is as often a founder-capacity problem as a business-model problem.
The second distinguishing feature is that the mentors are the holding's own managers. Executives from the group's defence, technology and machinery companies and from the holding centre, working in strategy, corporate communications, human resources, business development, financial reporting, research and development, engineering and operations, mentored the ventures directly. The programme is therefore a corporate-entrepreneur collaboration model rather than a funding relationship.
Selection and completion were run as a funnel: 60 applications from 26 cities produced 13 selected ventures and 38 entrepreneurs, of which 11 ventures completed the programme, a completion rate of 84.6 per cent.
The route out of the programme is explicit. Six ventures passed pre-evaluation and pitched to a jury at Demo Day; three were prioritised for support. All ventures that presented at Demo Day enter the investment evaluation process of the group's portfolio management company, which converts a development programme into a possible investment pipeline.
Figure 1: The eleven-month cycle, from orientation and bootcamp through mentoring and Demo Day to the impact report
Figure 2: Participating ventures and mentors at Demo Day, where six ventures pitched to the investment jury
Impact
Sustainability Impact
Climate
The programme is an enabler rather than a direct abatement measure: it does not reduce the holding's own Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, and its climate contribution over the eleven-month cycle from May 2025 to April 2026 is carried by the ventures it supports. The greenhouse gas effect of the supported ventures is not measured within the programme.
The supported ventures work on carbon and water efficiency in agriculture: controlled-environment growing systems, soil biology that reduces mineral input demand, microalgae-based production run on a carbon-negative model, plant-based protein replacing animal-derived ingredients, digital redistribution of surplus food, and fuel and input optimisation for field machinery.
One concrete internal outcome came out of the cohort within the same cycle: a collaboration on composting organic waste was started with one of the ventures, and organic waste generated at the holding's head office building is now converted into organic fertiliser through a controlled composting process, which diverts an operational waste stream from disposal.
Nature
The environmental effects reported by the supported ventures sit in water, soil and food waste.
A vertical farming venture reports 97 per cent water saving compared with conventional agriculture and operates without pesticides, using photon algorithms optimised for 171 plant species to obtain 30 times more yield per unit area.
A soil biotechnology venture monitors the soil microbiome through DNA analysis and produces biostimulants that reduce the need for chemical fertiliser, contributing to the protection of soil biodiversity; the same capability was applied in a group agricultural project, where soil microbial structure was analysed at DNA level to build a scientific data base for sustainable cultivation.
Other ventures in the cohort address food waste through a digital marketplace connecting surplus food from restaurants, cafés and shops with consumers, a chickpea-based zero-waste alternative to eggs that lowers water use and carbon emissions, and smart kits fitted to tractors that optimise fuel and input use.
Social
The programme is directed at ventures founded or co-founded by women, and the majority of participants were women; an increase in entrepreneurial motivation was observed over the cycle. Thirty-eight entrepreneurs took part in total.
Psychosocial resilience was treated as a programme component rather than as an optional extra: four psychosocial support sessions were delivered during the cycle, alongside one systems change training session provided by a global social entrepreneurship organisation.
Mentoring created 17 one-to-one meetings between 9 mentors and 7 ventures across 11 different fields of expertise, and gave corporate managers direct exposure to early-stage businesses. The ventures themselves create income and employment, and the mentoring and investment access strengthen that effect.
Business Impact
Benefits
The programme gives the holding a structured route into an early-stage technology field adjacent to its own industrial activities, without acquiring companies to obtain it. Every venture that reached Demo Day enters the investment evaluation process of the group's portfolio management company, so the programme functions as screened deal flow rather than as sponsorship.
Two collaborations were established during the cycle: organic waste from the head office is now composted into organic fertiliser with one venture, and soil microbial structure was analysed at DNA level with another inside a group agricultural project. Both produced operational results rather than intentions.
For the company's own managers, mentoring is a development exercise: 13 mentors took part in the programme, with 9 actively engaged in mentoring, holding 17 meetings across 11 areas of expertise and working on problems outside their normal remit and with a very different pace of decision-making.
Participating entrepreneurs identified the accessibility and active involvement of senior management as one of the strongest features of the programme, which is an asset for the company in a competitive early-stage ecosystem.
Costs
The direct costs are the programme budget covering design, selection, training, events and impact measurement carried out by the foundation partner.
The larger cost is management time. Ten different activity types were delivered over eleven months, including a bootcamp, four psychosocial support sessions, one systems change training session, one trend discussion event with experts, investors and entrepreneurs, and one ecosystem meeting, alongside 17 mentoring meetings held by senior managers whose time is expensive and hard to schedule.
The returns are uncertain by nature: early-stage ventures fail, and an investment pipeline is an option rather than a return. The company manages this by limiting financial exposure to modest support awards, by taking value from the mentoring and collaboration side regardless of investment outcomes, and by running selection and monitoring through a specialist partner rather than building that capability internally.
Impact evidence is a further limitation on cost-effectiveness assessment: results are collected by self-assessment through a pre-test at the start of the programme in May 2025 and a post-test at the end, monitored against six goal axes derived from the partner's theory of change, which is proportionate but not independently verified.
Impact Beyond Sustainability And Business
Co-benefits
The programme components are reusable by others: a theory-of-change framework, a pre-test and post-test methodology, a mentor matching system run on a mentoring management platform, a psychosocial support module and the corporate-entrepreneur integration model together form a structure that other corporates can copy.
Geographic reach inside the cohort — entrepreneurs from İstanbul, Ankara, Kayseri and Mersin — shows that the model does not depend on a single city ecosystem, and the international footprints of several ventures, spanning the United Kingdom, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States, extend any success beyond the domestic market.
Because the agricultural technology focus is tied to the climate agenda, the model is transferable to other regions facing the same combination of water stress and food security pressure.
Potential side-effects
Impact data is self-reported. The pre-test and post-test design measures what founders say changed about their business models, networks and impact thinking, and it cannot separate the effect of the programme from everything else happening to an early-stage company over eleven months.
The support award is concentrated: three of eleven completing ventures received financial support, so most participants leave with mentoring, network access and an investment review opportunity but no capital, and expectations need to be set accordingly at selection.
A corporate-run accelerator also depends on a single sponsor. If corporate priorities change, the mentoring capacity and the investment route disappear together, which is a structural difference from publicly funded or consortium-run programmes.
Implementation
Typical Business Profile
The model suits large corporates and holding groups with an industrial or investment base adjacent to the sector they wish to influence, and with enough internal expertise to staff mentoring from their own management ranks.
It is most relevant where a corporate investment vehicle exists that can receive the ventures at the end of the cycle, because that is what turns a development programme into a pipeline rather than a corporate social responsibility activity.
Delivery engages strategy, corporate communications, human resources, business development, financial reporting, research and development, engineering and operations, together with an external partner that carries programme design and impact measurement capability.
Approach
Choose a focus sector that intersects the corporate agenda: Define the programme around a field where the company has adjacent expertise and a strategic interest — sustainable agriculture and agricultural technology here — so that mentors can add substance and the investment vehicle can act on the results.
Set a clear eligibility rule at application: Restrict the cohort to a defined population, in this case ventures whose founder or co-founder is a woman, so selection, targeting and impact measurement all address the same gap.
Build the programme on a theory of change before recruiting: Agree the goal axes to be monitored — six in this case — and design the pre-test and post-test instruments during the design phase rather than after the programme starts, so change can be measured against a baseline.
Run selection as a funnel and publish the numbers: Open applications, evaluate, select, and record each stage, here 60 applications, 13 ventures and 38 entrepreneurs selected and 11 completing, so drop-out is visible and the completion rate is a real measure.
Staff mentoring from the corporate management ranks: Recruit mentors from group companies across strategy, communications, human resources, business development, financial reporting, research and development, engineering and operations, and match them to venture needs through a mentoring management platform.
Add founder resilience to the curriculum: Schedule psychosocial support sessions and systems change training alongside business model work, delivered by specialist providers, because early-stage attrition is often a founder-capacity problem rather than a technology problem.
Create an explicit route to capital: End the cycle with a Demo Day in front of a jury, award support to the prioritised ventures, and give every venture that presents access to the group investment vehicle's evaluation process, so participation carries a defined next step.
Convert relationships into operating collaborations: Look for procurement or operational pilots inside the group during the programme, as with the composting of head office organic waste and the DNA-level soil analysis in a group agricultural project, so the corporate side takes concrete value and the venture gains a reference customer.
Stakeholders Involved
Project leads: Senior management of the holding owns the programme actively rather than nominally: it made direct contact with the ventures, contributed to mentoring and led the development of potential collaborations. Entrepreneurs identified this accessibility as one of the programme's strongest features. Governance was assembled from managers across the group's companies and functions rather than from a single department, which is what allowed the programme to match different expertise to different venture needs.
Company functions: Managers from the group's defence, technology and machinery companies and from the holding centre took part as mentors, covering strategy, corporate communications, human resources, business development, financial reporting, research and development, engineering and operations. Nine mentors held 17 meetings with 7 ventures across 11 fields of expertise. The group's portfolio management company provides the investment evaluation route at the end of the cycle.
Main providers: A national entrepreneurship foundation acted as the implementing partner, running programme design, the application and selection process, entrepreneur follow-up, training and event coordination, and the impact measurement work. A specialist provider delivered the psychosocial support sessions and a global social entrepreneurship organisation delivered the systems change training. Mentor-venture matching was run on a mentoring management platform.
Other: The entrepreneurs themselves shaped the programme by sharing their needs and expectations, and their feedback fed into its development. Investors and sector experts joined the trend discussion event and the ecosystem meeting, and a jury assessed the Demo Day presentations. A group agricultural project provided the field setting for one of the venture collaborations.
Key Parameters To Consider
The cycle length is eleven months, from May 2025 to April 2026, which is long enough for business model work and mentoring to take effect and short enough to hold corporate attention.
Monitoring runs on a self-assessment method comparing a pre-test at programme start with a post-test at the end, against six goal axes derived from the partner's theory of change. Five indicators are tracked: the number of women entrepreneurs completing the programme, the number of ventures revising or strengthening their business model, the number meeting investors or entering an investment process, the number of participants building new connections, and the number defining or developing an impact model.
Ten different activity types were delivered across the cycle, so the programme is a sequence of formats rather than a single training event.
Approximately TRY 3.5 million was allocated to support the programme throughout its eleven-month cycle.
Implementation And Operations Tips
Make the investment route explicit at the start. The strongest incentive in the programme is not the award but the guaranteed access to the group investment vehicle's evaluation process, and stating that at application changes the quality of the applicant pool.
Use internal managers as mentors rather than external consultants. It costs more in scheduling but it is what produced the operating collaborations, because the mentor is also a potential internal sponsor.
Design the measurement instruments before the programme opens. A pre-test administered in the first month is the only chance to establish a baseline, and it cannot be reconstructed later.
Accept that self-assessment is the proportionate method at this scale, but state it plainly when reporting results so the evidence is not read as independent verification.
Look for one operational pilot inside the group during the cycle. A single reference deployment, such as composting head office organic waste, does more for a venture than a year of introductions.