TÜBİTAK 1512 — Entrepreneurship Support Program (BiGG)

TÜBİTAK 1512 BiGG — Entrepreneurship Support Grant

Offers Turkish founders and early startups with TÜBİTAK phased support for entrepreneurship readiness and commercialization.

TÜBİTAK 1512 BiGG (Bireysel Girişim) is a multi-stage entrepreneurship support program targeting early-stage technology entrepreneurs in Türkiye, including both pre-company founders and very early-stage startups. The program is structured sequentially: participants must first complete TÜBİTAK's Applied Entrepreneurship Training Program (the BiGG training component) before accessing grant funding stages for prototype development and commercialization. This prerequisite training step is a hard eligibility requirement — applicants who have not completed BiGG training are not eligible for the grant stages. Applications are processed through the e-TEYDEB portal, and the program is administered in Turkish.

Eligibility extends to individuals (pre-incorporation) at early stages and to for-profit companies at later stages; universities, non-profits, and research organizations are not eligible as leads. The program is open to technology entrepreneurs across a broad range of sectors including AI, biotechnology, climate and energy technologies, hardware, manufacturing, medtech, robotics, and space technology. Award amounts are denominated in TRY, are call-specific, and are published on the Turkish-language TÜBİTAK portal; no fixed ceiling is publicly stated on English-language program pages.

BiGG is explicitly designed as the entry point for pre-commercial, idea-stage innovators — not as a program for established companies with existing products. Participants progress through successive grant stages after completing training, with each stage gated on the outputs of the prior stage. Prospective applicants should first enroll in a BiGG training cohort and confirm current grant-stage call parameters on the e-TEYDEB portal, as per-call rules — including whether individuals or already-incorporated companies are eligible at a given stage — are specified in each call announcement.