Mehmet Ali Yalçındağ is a Turkish businessman and Executive Board Member at the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Türkiye (DEİK). Yalçındağ, is recently elected as Chairman at Türkiye-Germany Business Council, the leading non-governmental platform for facilitating trade and investments between Türkiye and Germany as well as facilitating joint ventures and cooperation in third countries within the business diplomacy. He was the former Chairman of the Turkey-US Business Council (TAIK), Turkey’s oldest and largest business council for 6 years.
Born in Istanbul and educated in London, Yalçındağ began his career at Dogan Holdings, one of Turkey’s most important conglomerates operating in the energy, media, insurance, and tourism sectors. At Dogan, Yalçındağ managed the group’s considerable media interests, eventually rising to head the conglomerate’s media arm, namely Dogan Media Group owner of the respected daily newspaper Hurriyet, as well as television channels Kanal D and CNN Turk. During his term of 22 years Dogan Media Group became a vertically integrated conglomerate while he initiated the international strategic partnerships with Time Warner, News Corp and maintained the growth through the M&A’s with Egmont, Burda and Axel Springer.
In March 2012, Yalçındağ became the Chairman of the Executive Board of Arvato in Turkey, a leading Bertelsmann company. At the same time in July 2012, he became the Partner and Chairman of the Executive Board of Yandex Turkey.
Currently, he is the Chairman of MADA Venture Capital of the Yalcindag Family Office. Since 2018, MADA has been managing the venture capital and real estate investments of the Yalçındağ family. It invests in "growth"-focused medium-sized companies and sectors that create value both in our country and in different geographies. Among the companies MADA has invested in are BluTV, recently acquired by Warner Discovery, ., production companies MAY Productions, SAGA, and Curious Gremlin, the fintech app Ortak, Turkey's largest co-working space service provider Kolektif House, the integrated communication platform VimeSoft, Champs, which offers flexible customer service through its technology, health tourism company Hop.Health, leading exporter of Bathroom Furniture company ORKA jointly invested with Maxis Venture Capital owned by Is Bank.