We made a pleasant interview with the Scottish partner and Chairman of İDO Sir Brian Souter about the transportation industry and investment plans of him.… Let’s start with a general question. What is your evaluation of the transportation industry all over the world? And secondly, what is your prediction about the future of the industry – for the coming years? I think the public transport is going to be a growth area in the future. One of the reasons for this is the big emphasis on the environment and I also think in the future we are going to see a big move towards electric proportion with vehicles. I think that air quality and city centers are going to become more and more important as an issue. We have a number of cities are looking for the zero emmission vehicles in the future. And actually one of the companies I have invested in mixed electric busses. We are finding very strong demand for the electric busses. Your company is in service - operating in different regions of the world. When you evaluate all those countries, I mean when you compare those, how can you value Turkish market? What do you think about the Turkish market? I think Turkey is catching up with the rest of the world and some of those areas. But first as we look at İstanbul, there is a very good metro system, I mean the underground and some big road improvements coming with the bridges and the tunnels. I think Turkey is beginning to look very much like any other modern country would look like in terms of public transport. And Turkish Airlines is a great example of how successful some Turkish companies have been and have been growing very fast and using İstanbul as a hub which is a great idea that seems it has been a very successful strategy. İDO has an important role in the transportation industry in Turkey. How you evaluate this role of İDO? I think İDO has some unique aspects. Because despite of all the openning of the Marmaray and all the things which I have talked about, all the positive things, there is a unique geography about the bosphorus and the sea of Marmara. And İDO is uniquely placed to exploid that geography. Let me give you an example, despite all the improvements in the road system, the most reliable way to get from Bursa to İstanbul is still the sea. Because you know it is going to be a predictable time for you. We are finding that Yenikapı where the metro hub based here and growth here is very very strong and we think for the long term that is going to continue. It is great to have all these and great to see the railway system developed, the road system developed and the airport growing. But there is still a unique opportunity to use the sea as a means of transportation. And in the long term there may be opportunities because one thing is missing in İstanbul at the moment which is an intercity railway. You have got all the other components, you have got tramway, you have got overground interurban trains, you have got underground metro trains, you have improved all your road systems. But the one thing you dont have is an intercity rail system. You know which many of European countries have and actually there is still an opportunity to use the sea to give really fast trips because the way the geography shaped. Let me give an example. I see we can get Marmaray and go to 45 notes instead of 25 notes. We can bring the trip time down from Bursa to Yenikapı, we can bring the trip time down to 55 minutes and that would be amazing development. We haven’t done that yet because the pricing point for that trip would be much higher. But that is a unique opportunity for Bursa. There has been an economic constriction (recession) all over the world. How this affected the companies and the transportation industry in general? I think one of the good things about transportation business is being quite resilient. I mean there has been a lot of changes all over the world and there has been a lot of developments and challenges. But one of the good things about transportation business is it is a very stable business. So we have not really had big impact. The form of transportation that is the most of vulnerable to terrorism for example is air transportation. But most of the land transportation is quite resilient. People make the trips anyway and people are making more and more trips all the time in Turkey, here the intercity bus market is growing every year, as more and more people have money and more money you have what do you want to do? You want to travel. Travel is associated with being having money to spend. İDO is an important brand of the transportation industry in Turkey. What is your evaluation of the performance of İDO since you invested in? A number of very good things happened to İDO. I think we inherited a company which should be in state ownership and the operations of the company evolved with being very good, very well run, very safe and what we have done is we have kept our safety record going and improved the efficiency of the company; with ticketing, with time tables, with better utilization over boats and we have grown the revenue. growing the revenue something like 50 or 60 percent since we took the company. Since we invested, sales have been doubled. Almost doubled the revenue since 2011 which means we have very rapid growth in sales. What can you say about the yearly performance of İDO for 2016? It was a very interesting year. We had a very strong first half of the year. Then we had a very bad summer because of the coup attempt took place in Turkey. And our numbers have been very seriously affected by that. And of course we had the openning of the bridge which also we expect we knew it was going to happen and it was going to have an impact on us. But we have actually proved to be quite strong in our market share remains very high despite the bridge being opened. What are the targets for 2017? There is a number of targets. The first we need to do is again to improve our efficiency. But I think also there is another opportunity to grow some of the sea bus businesses which have had very rapid growth in the last 12 months and I think there will be some challenges in 2017 but the company is in a good shape to face that challenges. There has been a rapid increase in exchange rate of dollar. Turkey has to be more attractive for foreign investors to control this situation. How do you see the existing, the available environment for foreing investors? I think the big challenge has been the exchange rate for us. We had the targets and it wasn’t for the exchange rate and I think we have to consider in the longer term, should we really try to be moving to lira day relevant dollar day . So that is one of the big challenges for 2017. Should we look at reorganizing day and see we can move more towards using Turkish lira for our day or in dollars for our day. You have an inspiring background that everyone is curious about the details. Your company has been founded more than 20 years ago as a small-business and now it has been a global, world-wide organisation. What is the story behind this success? What is the key that brought you here? What can you tell for the young generation? I think the entrepreneurs are the life blood for economy and we want to create environment where young people are willing to start businesses. And to do that we have to try to minimize regulation because regulation is a burden for people. This is true in every country. I just mean entrepreneurs are discouraged by regulations and I think also we need to create a tax-efficient environment for entrepreneurs so they are rewarded for their work. I think just government has responsibility to do these things. And for entrepreneurs, on a personal level it has to do with having vision and ideas. And no only vision and ideas but also being passionate about these ideas. Entrepreneurs are driven people. They can’t help themselves. It is like a genetic illness. They can’t help themselves wanting to create businesses. So they are not always driven by desires to have wealth, they are driven by a creative spirit that make someone to build businesses and develop ideas. I have always been a person have a lot of ideas and some of them have been terrible ideas. Because no all ideas are good. But entrepreneurs should keep having ideas and they have to build their system to try them all. Sometimes some will end up with failure. They should not discourage people from trying to do things. Entrepreneurs try and try again. And that is what the culture of the countries is important. This is what Americans are very good at. The Americans have no fear for failure. They upload success but almost upload failure as you see at least the person tried. This is very different from the Europeans because the Europeans don’t have many entrepreneurs and that is because the Europeans highlight failure instead of success. But I think Turkey has a good culture about business and entrepreneurship. So you mean people are trying again and again in Turkey? Yes, because you need to encourage young people to do that, to develop their passions and to develop their ideas. You are a very successful investor and have more than 200 private investments. In which countries you see a potential of investment these days? Do you have plans to invest in several secret potentials? We have investments in many different areas and sectors. I have invested in Poland which some people would say as a frontier economy. Turkey to some extent is a frontier economy. And we are in New Zealand, in Finland, we are in quite arranged in different countries. But you do have to be carreful not to spread your geography too much as an investor. Because you do need to understand the countries you invest. So we think about the opportunities and we take a look at some other places and regions. We look at Romania and a number of other places as well but we have got to also have the capability to manage our investments in these other countries. So at the moment we tend to concantrate on geographies. Talking about geography, how you choose the company or geography or region to invest in. What is the key point that makes you feel sure about the potential? I think there are some genetic issues and there are some specific issues. Genetically, we are looking for countries where there is a good work ethic and educated workforce and not too much regulation and I think Turkey does quite well on these codes. On the specific issues, we are looking for an opportunity to develop a business that is not been developed, you know you are looking for new potential. So you are looking if there is something missing in the market, if there is something it could be done differently in the market, if there is an entrepreneur in the market who has got a great idea and you can partner them into develop it. Actullay these are what we are looking for. What is your investment approach? The criteria? Actually we don’t develop start-up businesses because they take a lot of management time. So on our private investment portfolio, we are more like a private equity fund. So we tend to invest in businesses that may have step up our profitiability. And then have potential to develop much faster. So we would look businesses where an entrepreneur is ready to develop the proof of concept and the business which is trading profitably. But exchange of capital could take it to the next stage and that is what we really look for our private equity fund. Which innovations, changes are ready to be born in the industry? In the transport industry, I think there are a number of innovations from the digital age. There are opportunities and possible threats. And in the digital sector we have got disruptors like Uber. But there are not only potential disruptors, there are also other potential disruptors in the bus business, in the rail business as well as taxi business. And we can be a part of developing new technologies. The second part of the digital opportunity for us in the transport sector as what we call aggregators. I had invested in a company called Skyscanner which was a good experience for us. So we are looking for opportunities to develop aggregators in the industry. And the final digital opportunity is traffic planning with all these GPSs etc. and there is a lot of traffic planning apps. And traffic planning is also relevant to us because it is often. İDO maybe a part of that traffic planning so we think there could be opportunities for traffic planning. In conclusion, there are some innovations and we can take the advantage of those innovations for our industry as well.