Akın, the founder of TABIT Agricultural information and Communication Technologies Inc., was brought into action Turkey’s first communication, e-learning and e-trade media in agriculture field, established in 2004. By modeling the credit cards of farmers together with banks, she ensured the farmers to be able to access finance sources without having any loss. She visited around 12.000 villages in order to express these.

She founded Vodafone Farmers’ Club with Vodafone and started early warning informing in agriculture to give information and services for 1,4 million farmers and their families with special farmer applications. As of 2015, Vodafone Farmers’ Club business model was started to be implemented in India, Ghana, Kenya, New Zealand and Tanzania.

With the support of Intel, she ensured Farmer Computer software to be produced which allows each literate person to use and ask questions to experts regarding information, communication, marketing etc.

Currently, Akın is working in a village of Aydin in order to bring rural life to the future, by establishing an implementation area of intelligent agriculture Technologies which is Vodafone Smart Village where the farmers can see either farming or technology at the same place.

She studied at Akdeniz University (2003 – 2005) Department of Agricultural Marketing, Anadolu University (2006 – 2008) Faculty of Business Administration,  Bogaziçi University (2012 – 2013) also Micro MBA.

Akın still continues to develop different projects in order to increase the quality of life in rural areas, for the purposes of ensuring sustainable economic empowerment, accelerating the social development of farmers and their families. With such projects, it is aimed to bring together 742.000 farmers with Agriculture 4.0 technologies within 5 years and increase productivity in agriculture at an amount of 1,5 Billion USD.

She was awarded as Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year and nominated for the Nobel Prize in the field “Work for Peace”. Furthermore, she was chosen as an Ashoka Fellow in 2012.

Topic: Innovation for sustainable economic empowerment and social development