S Bayhan

S. Burak Bayhan was a Director (later referenced as Senior Director) on the investment team at İş Girişim Sermayesi Yatırım Ortaklığı A.Ş., one of Turkey's oldest and largest private-equity/venture-capital vehicles. İş Girişim is affiliated with the Türkiye İş Bankası (İşbank) group, was founded in 2000, and completed an IPO on Borsa İstanbul in 2004 (listing roughly 37.7% of its shares). The firm invests management expertise and capital into companies that contribute to the Turkish economy, and over its history has deployed on the order of USD 125 million across ~15–17 portfolio companies with around 11 exits.

In his role, Bayhan served as a portfolio manager/deal lead, most visibly on the firm's TatilBudur (online travel) investment, where he acted as the public spokesperson for İş Girişim. He is quoted in Turkish business press around 2015–2016 discussing TatilBudur's ~20 million cumulative site visits and the plan to expand the product portfolio and shift the company's structure toward mobile/online platforms.

İş Girişim's current published organization chart (General Manager Kubilay Aykol; deputy general managers Elif Ağır, Burcu Perişanoğlu, Barış Şahin) no longer lists Bayhan, indicating he has since moved on from the firm. His firm email ([hidden]) persists in aggregator databases from his tenure.

*(Caution: several Turkish news items about a "Burak Bayhan" appointed in 2025 as Deputy General Manager of Sales & Marketing at Sompo Sigorta describe a career in banking/insurance — Finansbank/QNB Finansbank, Boğaziçi University Industrial Engineering, NYU Stern MBA — with no mention of İş Girişim. That may be a different individual sharing the same name, so that biography is not attributed here.)*

• Invested as a growth-equity / expansion / control investor on behalf of a listed VC trust — taking meaningful-to-majority stakes in established, revenue-generating Turkish companies rather than seed-stage startups.
• Deals were typically multi-million-dollar checks, often majority positions; e.g., İş Girişim's TatilBudur position was ~99.98% of the company.
• Sector-agnostic with a bias toward businesses that "contribute to the Turkish economy" — online travel/e-commerce, IT/technology, logistics, industrials, and consumer/food & beverage.
• Value-add thesis emphasized operational transformation and digital/mobile growth — Bayhan publicly framed the TatilBudur investment around building out mobile apps and modernizing the corporate structure for online platforms.
• Frequently co-invested with other institutional funds (e.g., alongside Poland's MCI on TatilBudur).