Trendyol took part in TEKNOFEST Southeast 2026 with its interactive stand and artificial intelligence-focused E-Commerce Competition. The young people who were successful in the competition were rewarded.
TEKNOFEST, one of Turkey's largest technology meetings, opened its doors in Şanlıurfa this year with its Southeastern leg. Trendyol, one of the official stakeholders of the festival, brings e-commerce infrastructure, sports technologies and interactive simulations to the participants in a 200 square meter special experience area; Young engineers competed fiercely with artificial intelligence and data science models in the E-Commerce Competition organized in cooperation with the T3 Foundation.
The 200 square meter stand established at the festival area in Şanlıurfa offered a comprehensive simulation for those curious about the cuisine of the e-commerce ecosystem. “You are in control of your business with the Seller Panel!” In the section prepared with the concept, visitors had the opportunity to directly test how all processes of a digital business, from order management to stock tracking, are managed from a single center.
In the area that blended technology with sports, there was a special virtual reality (VR) experience inspired by the achievements of the National Women's Volleyball Team. While the participants demonstrated their volleyball skills by going to the virtual field with VR glasses, they participated in various tests that measured their technological skills and reflexes in the "Digital Master" track.
In the technology development leg of the event, the E-Commerce Competition, which was implemented in partnership with Trendyol and the Turkish Technology Team Foundation (T3 Foundation), attracted attention. The focus of the competition was “natural language processing and search intent analysis”, one of the most critical elements of modern e-commerce platforms. Young developers worked hard to develop algorithms that strengthen the semantic link between users' search queries and the product catalog.
During the 21-day intense pre-qualification marathon conducted on the Kaggle platform, the participants constantly optimized the algorithms they developed:
Number of Applications: 544 teams and 1,700 competitors
Model Testing: A total of 11,400 different predictions produced during the pre-selection process
Finalist Candidates: 10 teams and 32 competitors who appeared before the jury
Among the teams that presented live demos of their projects to the jury, those who succeeded won big cash prizes. The teams that won the competition were listed as follows:
First: ArmaTerimi team with a prize of 150 thousand TL
Second: Abdül Kolayadam team with a prize of 120 thousand TL
Third: Dream Team with a prize of 100 thousand TL
Although technology festivals generally remain at the prototype development level, such sectoral competitions within the scope of TEKNOFEST allow young engineer candidates to work directly with industrial-scale data sets. This competition, which models Trendyol's search traffic generated by millions of users, serves as a critical bridge for transforming theoretical knowledge into practical and scalable e-commerce solutions.
