Interview with M. Gürhan Uluğoğulları, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ant Teknik

We conducted an enjoyable interview with Ant Teknik Board Chairman M. Gürhan Uluğoğulları, during which we discussed the company's areas of activity and the sectors it serves. Uluğoğulları also shared the company's targets for the coming years.

Could you tell our readers about yourself and your professional background?

I was born in 1963 in Uzunköprü, Edirne. My father was a retired colonel. As an officer's child, I had the opportunity to travel to almost every part of Turkey. I completed high school in Izmir. In 1986, I graduated from the Chemistry Department at Hacettepe University. After finishing my studies, I first worked at a preparatory school and then at a leather company. I began my career in laboratory equipment in the sales group at İncekaralar, which I regarded as the academy of this sector. After continuing for about 10 years, we decided to establish our own business. The three other partners with whom we started at Ant Teknik are, like myself, colleagues with sector experience. In parallel with their education, they began their professional careers primarily in the field, as sales and service engineers. Having had direct contact with customers in the field; understanding customer expectations and priorities by experiencing the atmosphere firsthand helps a manager both increase awareness about the market and better understand their own employees. We believe this characteristic has differentiated our approach to our employees, and our employees have reflected this positively to our customers.

Could you provide information about Ant Teknik, founded in 1999? How do you define your success in the sector?

Ant Teknik began operations in 1999 in Istanbul by selling basic laboratory equipment and chromatography consumables. Thanks to its experienced founding team and colleagues with expertise in analytical instruments, the company quickly became one of the leading firms in the sector. Today, our 120 employees, the majority of whom are from our technical team, serve our customers through regional offices in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana and Baku, sales and service support points in Bursa, Konya and Trabzon, and regional dealers operating throughout the country. In achieving this position, I can say that the greatest momentum came in 2003 when we became the Turkey representative of Shimadzu, one of the world's leading manufacturers of chromatography and spectroscopy equipment. Shimadzu's motto, "For the Wellbeing of Humanity and the Earth," has always been a guide for us. Shimadzu, founded in 1875, is recognized as a technology leader that has pioneered many innovative technologies and firsts. I regard Shimadzu employee Koichi Tanaka's 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work using MALDI-TOF technique as an indicator of this. What was special about Tanaka was that he was the first researcher to receive the Nobel Prize without any academic career, conducting his research entirely in the private sector. This demonstrates Shimadzu's emphasis on and support for research. In addition to Shimadzu, we are the authorized distributor in Turkey for nearly 30 leading manufacturers worldwide, including Ecolab, BioTek, Applikon Biotechnology, Nova Biomedical, Erweka, Getinge Life Sciences, Thermo Fisher Scientific BPD, Restek, and Eppendorf Himac Technologies. We are careful about our business partnerships; we particularly value that our business partners' quality philosophy aligns with ours. We strive to establish partnerships with companies producing products of quality appropriate to Ant Teknik's service understanding, partnerships that will strengthen our reputation.

Which sectors do you serve? What are your product varieties?

Sector-wise, we serve a broad range of areas. We deliver our products and services to pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, food, chemicals, textiles, cosmetics, plastics and polymers, petrochemicals, environment, energy, automotive and many other application areas. We work with industrial facilities, private laboratories, public laboratories and universities. We have solutions for R&D, product development and quality control laboratories of industrial facilities, GMP-controlled production areas, public and private research and routine testing laboratories, and research and student laboratories of universities. We can classify our product groups under analytical instruments, life sciences and biotechnology solutions, chromatography consumables and basic laboratory equipment.

What is your domestic and international sales potential? Could you discuss the factors that determine your sales volume?

We export to Azerbaijan abroad. We have a sales and technical team based in Baku. They primarily handle project work in public laboratories and universities. Depending on project intensity, we sometimes provide support from Turkey as well.

Technology plays an important role in the sectors Ant Teknik serves. How do you position Ant Teknik with technology from this perspective?

We contribute to our customers' business processes and productivity with the innovative technologies we provide. In the solutions we offer, particularly analytical instruments, the importance of technology, especially software and information technologies, is increasing. Through software and information technologies, data analysis, data management and device controls are being developed to be more intuitive, flexible and easier to use. Automation systems, software and information technologies are integral to the laboratory and thus to our business for users demanding more efficient workflows. One of the current topics related to analytical data is data integrity. In recent years, ensuring data integrity has become a priority area for analytical laboratories. The developed software, while providing data security, has also reduced the time required for controlling analysis results.

Could you tell us about your new business partnerships? What are the characteristics of these partnerships and what advantages will they offer your customers?

Through our collaboration with technology leaders, we have the opportunity to reach more researchers each passing day and continue to establish new business partnerships in line with their demands. In recent years, particularly in the Life Sciences and Biotechnology field, we have partnered with important groups such as BioTek, Applikon Biotechnology, Nova Biomedical, Erweka, Getinge Life Sciences and Thermo Fisher Scientific Bioprocessing, significantly expanding our product portfolio. Considering changing needs and our new partnerships, we continue to restructure and add new colleagues to our team.

Do you conduct any work within the scope of corporate social responsibility? How do these efforts reflect on your employees, brand and sense of responsibility?

As Ant Teknik, we embrace the belief that "no matter how challenging the conditions, we hold the key to solving the problem." Participating in corporate social responsibility projects is important in terms of increasing sensitivity in the business world and, more broadly, throughout society, and raising awareness of how we can contribute to solutions. We also carry out joint projects with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working on environment, health, society and education. Until now, we have allocated resources for the Afforestation Project we conducted with TEMA and the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs and battery-powered wheelchair projects we conducted with TOFD (Turkish Spinal Cord Paralysis Association). In addition, with our corporate running team koşANTeknik, we have repeatedly run for TOFD, creating resources and awareness together with our employees. In line with our mission to contribute to creating a happier and more prosperous country for future generations, we will continue to participate in corporate social responsibility projects.

Could you discuss your targets for the coming years? What innovations await Ant Teknik in the years ahead?

The COVID-19 pandemic has left deep impacts on human health and welfare and has caused very serious consequences, both socially and economically, worldwide. We perhaps understand the importance of science better now than ever before. Today, like everywhere in the world, we see many researchers in our country focusing their efforts on vaccine and drug development and finding a treatment to combat the virus, and we understand the importance of science perhaps better than ever. As Ant Teknik, in the coming years, guided by science and technology, with our business partners, our knowledge base and all our resources, we will continue to support the efforts of researchers working in the field of life sciences and contribute to society. In addition, as a company serving critical sectors such as pharmaceuticals and food that continued uninterrupted product supply during difficult pandemic conditions, we are adapting our working conditions to changing circumstances. As a natural consequence of the pandemic, our work on concepts and processes such as accelerated digital transformation, remote service support, online training, remote and flexible work continues. Additionally, at ANTLab, our application laboratory established in our Istanbul office, we conduct work on certain new applications and methods for our customers. Our expert chemists have conducted highly acclaimed work, particularly in pharmaceutical and food applications, with instruments installed in our laboratory, with a focus on mass spectrometry. We continue our work, considering the legal requirements our customers must meet and focusing on solutions that will increase analysis efficiency, including sample preparation steps. Finally, I cannot pass without mentioning the changes in our employee profile. Just a year ago, almost all of our managers were from Generation X, but today Generation Y colleagues have joined management. We value the participation, views and contributions of new generations. When directing our plans and processes, we take into account the expectations of young people regarding their careers and lives, and their sensitivity to what is happening in the world.