Hepsiburada trains 250 students in digital skills, how can small firms close the gap?
Hepsiburada, the Turkish online marketplace, is training 250 university students in e-commerce, digital marketing and AI in the 4th term of “Yarınlara Söz” (Promise to Tomorrow), the program it runs with the Women in Science and Technology Association, SistersLab (Perakende.org, 12 August 2026). Applications ran from 12 August to 9 September 2026 and are now closed. The term has an 80 percent quota for women, which means a target of 200 female students.
Here is what it means for you. The program’s syllabus is, in effect, a ready list of the digital skills that online selling runs on. In autumn 2026, a small business in Türkiye selling on a marketplace or its own website can use that list as a draft curriculum for its own team. The steps below turn it into a four-week calendar.
Which skills does Hepsiburada’s Yarınlara Söz program teach young people?
Five topics and six workshops. The topics are e-commerce, digital marketing, AI, entrepreneurship and career readiness. The workshops cover web design, prompt writing, LinkedIn, interview techniques, communication and basic rights at work. The target group is engineering and related faculty students at public universities in Anatolia.
Which businesses does Hepsiburada’s digital skills program affect?
It touches three groups. E-commerce businesses hiring may find a wider pool of trained candidates. Sole proprietors who leave all digital work to one person can see clearly which skills the market values. Indirectly, small businesses selling in Anatolian university cities may find it easier to reach young, trained local candidates.
How can a small business build digital skills in its team, using Hepsiburada’s syllabus?
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- Step 1: Pick the three of five topics that fit you
- Step 2: Work out weekly training hours with a formula
- Step 3: Tie every skill to an output
- Step 4: Track cost and return on a single line
In four steps over four weeks. Each step ties to a number: either one taken from the program list or a formula where you plug in your own figure. The goal is not for your team to “finish a course” but to produce something useful every week.
Step 1: Pick the three of five topics that fit you
Write the program’s five topics in a column and score each from 1 to 3: 1 means “we don’t need it”, 3 means “we need it every day”. The three highest scores become your first-term plan. If you sell on a marketplace, e-commerce and digital marketing will most likely make the top two.
Step 2: Work out weekly training hours with a formula
Weekly training hours = number of people in training × hours you can spare per person. You set this number based on your season; cut it in peak weeks, but never to zero. In a business that does not put the number in the calendar, training gets postponed at the first order.
Step 3: Tie every skill to an output
The output of the prompt workshop is draft descriptions for your best-selling products. The output of the web design workshop is a reworked page for your top-selling product. Training without an output stays on paper.
Step 4: Track cost and return on a single line
Training cost = total training hours × hourly wage + tools and subscriptions. Next to it, write two measures: number of products listed and conversion rate. If neither measure has moved after four weeks, change the topic you picked.
What do e-commerce and digital marketing skills like Hepsiburada’s turn into on a business’s digital side?
They turn into marketplace listings, ad management and reading customer data. According to the Ministry of Trade, e-commerce volume in Türkiye rose 52.2 percent in 2025 to TL 4.57 trillion, reaching 19.3 percent of total trade. For a business selling in this channel, digital skill is part of revenue.
What is the most common mistake in a small business’s digital skills plan, compared with a program like Hepsiburada’s?
The most common mistake is training one person and loading all digital work onto them. When that person leaves, the passwords, the ad account and the product knowledge leave too. Until the skill is spread, the gap does not close; it just moves.
What should a small business owner do this week about the digital skills gap Hepsiburada’s program points to?
Block one hour on Monday, gather the team and fill in the template below. By the end of the week, every line should have an owner and a date. If you want to build the plan together with your marketplace and website strategy, this is the work we do in e-commerce consulting.
The Monday digital skills template
Write the template on one page, fill it in with the team and come back to the same page in four weeks.
- Three chosen skills: …, …, …
- Owner and backup for each skill: …
- Weekly training hours = number of people × hours per person = …
- Training cost = total hours × hourly wage + tools = …
- Four-week output target (product pages, descriptions, answered messages): …
- Review date and two measures to check: products listed, conversion rate.
Quick Summary
- Hepsiburada and SistersLab’s Yarınlara Söz program is training 250 university students in its 4th term (Perakende.org, 12 August 2026).
- Applications closed on 9 September 2026; the term targets 200 female students.
- The program covers e-commerce, digital marketing, AI, entrepreneurship and career readiness.
- 75 percent of Türkiye’s 634,611 e-commerce businesses are sole proprietorships (Ministry of Trade, 2025 data).
- For a small business, the first step is to take skills away from one person and spread them across the team, tied to outputs.
Short Glossary
- Prompt writing
- Prompt writing is the skill used to phrase clear, checkable instructions so an AI tool returns the result you want.
- Product listing
- Product listing is the task used to upload a product to a marketplace or website with its title, description, images and category.
- Conversion rate
- Conversion rate is the measure used to show what share of product page visitors go on to buy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Next Step
If you want to map your team’s digital skills together, fill in the consult your expert form, and we will build the plan for your first four weeks with you.
Sources: Perakende.org, 12 August 2026 · CNBC-e, 12 August 2026 · Hepsiburada Investor Relations · Ministry of Trade, Outlook of E-Commerce in Türkiye, 2026
Updated: October 2026
Sık Sorulan Sorular
The program has run since 2023, and this is its 4th term. It has reached more than 500 students so far, 370 of them women. The news does not say how long the program lasts, how many hours a week it takes or whether it is online or in person.
All graduates receive a certificate of participation. The first 10 students get a Hepsiburada gift voucher and a one-to-one mock interview with the HR team. How many graduates found jobs has not been disclosed, so do not read the program as a job guarantee.
Canan Binal Yılmaz, Hepsiburada’s Group Director of Corporate Communications and Social Impact, stresses the importance of young people having equal access to the opportunities of the digital economy. The company also states on its investor relations site that its women entrepreneurs program, launched in 2017, has supported more than 67,000 women entrepreneurs.
According to Türkiye’s Ministry of Trade, there were 634,611 e-commerce businesses in Türkiye in 2025, and 75 percent of them were sole proprietorships. In a sole proprietorship, product uploads, ads and customer messages often live on the owner’s phone. If the skill sits with one person, orders go on holiday when that person does.
According to the same report, 28 percent of e-commerce business owners are women. The program’s quota for women could mean more digitally skilled women in the talent pool around these businesses. That is a possibility, not a measured result.
A certificate is a starting point, not experience. Ask the candidate what they produced in the workshops. If you plan to hire an intern or a part-time young employee, check insurance and contract terms with the official source. Verify with the official source; this is not legal or financial advice.
Product listing. If the title, description, images and category are entered badly, the product does not show up in search and just gathers dust. Hepsiburada says it has more than 100,000 sellers; in that crowd, standing out starts with listing quality. We look at growing without new stores in our piece on MR.DIY Türkiye’s growth plan.
In product description drafts, first replies to customer messages and ad copy tests. Prompt writing is the core skill here; the difference comes from the person who asks the right question, not from the tool. For when to move to device and infrastructure spending, see our reading of Lenovo’s AI revenue through a business owner’s eyes.
Orders arrive but no one checks them; the ad budget drains but no one reads the report. Make sure at least two people know every critical digital task. Open account access in the business’s name and keep it recorded in one place.
What the program hands out is a certificate of participation, not proof of tested competence. In your own team, look at the output, not the paper. Count how many product pages got fixed in four weeks and how many customer messages got a same-day reply.
Who does which digital job, who has access to which accounts and how many products you listed last month. Without these three, the plan runs on guesswork. We interpret similar moves in Turkish retail regularly on our retail page.
No, applications for the 4th term closed on 9 September 2026. The news gives no date for the next term.
You gain a candidate with basic training in e-commerce, digital marketing and AI. Ask what they produced in the workshops; a certificate alone does not show experience.
No. Work out the cost yourself with the formula total hours × hourly wage + tools, and compare it with the output after four weeks.