Karavan Meets with TOBB President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu to Discuss Digital Trade and SME Challenges

İstanbul, Türkiye – 15 August 2025 – The Karavan team visited Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, President of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Türkiye (TOBB), for a wide-ranging discussion on the current state of SME trade and the role digital infrastructure can play in addressing key structural challenges.

Topics Discussed

The meeting covered three interconnected themes:

Challenges facing SMEs and exporters in the region

The discussion examined the practical difficulties that SMEs and exporters across the region face: complex customs documentation, fragmented logistics chains, slow and expensive cross-border payment settlement, limited access to trade finance, and insufficient market intelligence. These frictions raise the cost and risk of cross-border trade to a level that excludes many otherwise capable SMEs.

How digital trade can address these challenges

The team discussed how digitising trade documentation, payments, and logistics coordination can systematically reduce these frictions — and how platforms like Karavan are designed specifically to make cross-border trade accessible to SMEs that lack the scale to manage these complexities independently.

TCCI's strategic role in regional economic cooperation

Given that Hisarcıklıoğlu serves as Founding and Honorary President of TCCI — the Union of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the Turkish States — the meeting also addressed TCCI's strategic role in facilitating economic integration and trade development across the Turkic world.