We’ve turned our vision into reality. The franchise industry has embraced artificial intelligence.

franchie.ai is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to manage the end-to-end candidate management process for brands currently offering franchises. A brand advertises to grant a franchise and collects applications. We handle those applications from the very first second they arrive; our AI evaluates and scores them, and directs the right applications to the right person in the brand’s sales team. We enable brands to identify investor profiles. We track which channel each prospective franchisee comes from and improve efficiency. And we make this accessible to brands via a very simple interface. In short, we are currently the artificial intelligence behind franchise sales.

My name is Ali Rıza Dilbaz, and I have been working in marketing for fourteen years. For many years, I have been addressing the marketing challenges faced by global and national brands. We have an AI marketing agency called They Are AI. At this agency, we create AI twins for brands and manage the decision-making and communication processes within marketing. A reality we observed amongst our clients in the sector led us to franchie.ai. In other words, we came here not with a theory, but with a problem we encountered in the field.

It’s a very simple yet very costly problem. Brands take days to get back to franchise candidates. Almost three out of every four brands do this. A candidate applies, full of enthusiasm and ready to go. But no one gets back to them in good time. By then, the candidate has lost interest, forgotten they applied, or moved on to another brand. Research from MIT makes this very clear: 78 per cent of candidates proceed with the first brand to get back to them. There is as yet no comprehensive academic study on this subject in Turkey, but our observations on the ground and our discussions with brands indicate that the average response time runs into days. In other words, this is a race against time, and the sector is losing this race every single day.

“Returning to the island late is the same as not returning at all.”

This is precisely where the difference lies. At Franchie, we see this in the way our AI learns to recognise and evaluate its true value. A bot simply does what it is told. An agent, on the other hand, learns from every piece of data and continuously refines its decisions for the benefit of the brand. We don’t have bots that provide pre-programmed responses; we have AI agents. These agents build the brand’s ideal investor profile. Not only that, but they continuously refine this profile by learning from every piece of incoming data. In other words, this is not a bot. It is an AI system that is entirely data-driven and self-training. Our agents also act as coaches for the sales team. They improve cumulatively with every application. That is the difference.

First of all, I would like to point out that franchie.ai is currently a system that uses artificial intelligence to manage the efficiency and measurability of sales, as well as the profile of potential investors. In other words, it is not merely an intermediary, but an infrastructure that manages the entire process.

Which channel produces higher-quality candidates?

Which channel produces higher-quality candidates?

Which budget range actually translates into a branch?

Which candidates should be fast-tracked into the sales team?

Which candidates should we keep an eye on?

Which advertising campaign attracts genuine investors?

What is the brand’s ideal investor profile?

What is the brand’s ideal investor profile?

The moment a candidate applies, they’re contacted via WhatsApp within sixty seconds. Mind you, exactly sixty seconds. Which salesperson could manage that? Think about working hours; think about day-to-day operational tasks.

What’s more, franchie.ai speaks with the brand’s own voice, drawing on its insights. It scores applicants across various criteria: budget, location, experience and timing. It notifies the sales team of serious, high-potential candidates, whilst retaining other applicants in the system along with their scores and conversation history. The sales team can view all applications, complete with interview insights, at any time. It doesn’t stop following up with those who haven’t responded either; franchie.ai tracks AI signals to reach out to candidates again at the right time. We’ve built this as a product, not just a promise. With the brands we’ve worked with, we first consolidated applications in a single place, established a real-time data stream, and saw with our own eyes how conversion rates changed. We then analysed the impact of speed and effective communication, and developed scenarios. Once those scenarios proved effective, we turned them into a product. Naturally, with artificial intelligence at the heart of what we do. That is the role of an agentic company: to work with data and learn from it; to increase efficiency; and to enhance the brand’s value.

“That’s the role of an agentic company. Working with data and increasing efficiency through learning.”

Yes. We’ve been working with visionary brands that place their trust in us for around two months now. We’ve now expanded our capacity to accommodate five more brands in order to manage the high volume of early-access requests. We have the capacity. Dedicated agents are assigned to each brand. Following a brand-specific AI training process and legal compliance checks, franchie.ai begins operations. Brands wishing to be the first to experience this system and capitalise on this advantage whilst there are no competitors yet are invited to contact us. Those who act early secure the greatest advantage, as, by the very nature of this business, the first to move wins.

This is an area where we make no compromises. We process candidate data – in other words, a brand’s most valuable and sensitive information. We are acutely aware of the weight of this responsibility. Baturay Dilbaz, a solicitor specialising in the Personal Data Protection Act (KVKK) and personal data security, acts as a consultant to our team, and we work together on franchie.ai’s legal development. We developed the product from the very outset, building it around each brand’s contractual obligations and compliance with the KVKK. In other words, security is not a feature we added later; it is the very foundation of the system.

But we don’t stop there. It is essential that the brand itself is fully compliant with the law. That is why we always go through these questions together during our introductory meetings. We examine all the brand’s documents, disclosure statements and data processing procedures involved in the franchising process to ensure they meet this standard. Because data security is not a one-sided affair. Every change is recorded, every instance of data access is auditable, and each brand remains the sole owner of its own data.Let’s not forget that the penalties for breaches of the Personal Data Protection Act (KVKK) are very severe, ranging up to administrative fines of millions of lira. Ensuring that brands recognise this risk and take the right steps is also part of our job. We advise them on this matter and work with them to develop the right framework. An AI company that fails to recognise the importance of data security has no chance of surviving today. A brand’s trust in us begins with its trust in its own data, and we work tirelessly to earn that trust.

Quite the opposite. Artificial intelligence won’t take over the salesperson’s job; it will take over the part of the job they dislike the most. Today, a franchise sales representative spends most of their day screening applications. They try to identify the serious candidates from among hundreds of applications. This is a mechanical and exhausting task that devalues the human element. It is the human who must close the deal, persuade the customer and shake hands. Screening is the machine’s job; selling is the human’s job. So let me be clear: artificial intelligence will leave slow-moving brands behind, but it will empower the good salesperson.

“The sorting machine does the work; selling is the human’s job.”

Although the franchise model is a major economic force, why has the adoption of technology remained limited?

I think there are a few reasons for this.

Firstly, franchising is still viewed in many countries as a model that relies on personal connections and on-the-ground experience. This is not incorrect. Franchising is a business based on trust. However, the fact that it is based on trust does not mean it should not be data-driven.

Secondly, brands have long regarded the number of enquiries as an indicator of success. However, the real question is not the number of enquiries, but which enquiries might lead to the right investor. Receiving a large number of enquiries may be a success, but if these enquiries cannot be segmented, tracked or converted into sales, this results in significant inefficiency.

Thirdly, in franchise sales, technology has often remained at the CRM level. CRM is necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own. CRM stores the data for you. What we want to do, however, is to derive meaning from that data. CRM captures the lead; we convert it into sales potential.

This is the starting point for franchie.ai. We are developing a system for franchise sales that does more than just keep records; it helps with decision-making.

I have three reasons, and they are all concrete. Firstly, franchise growth in emerging markets is faster than in mature markets. Global players are neglecting this region, which presents a clear opportunity for us. We can move very quickly into the MENA region. There have been Turkish start-ups that have succeeded in doing this before. So it can be done. That is why we want the sector’s support as well; because this will not only be our success, but the country’s success too.

Secondly, at a time when we as a country are making a push into artificial intelligence, we need to choose the right strategy. Turkey’s main focus should not be on directly replicating the global race for large language models. This field requires enormous capital, chips, data and infrastructure capacity. We are creating massive opportunities by building application, data, integration, security and workflow layers on top of existing powerful models to solve the real-world problems faced by various sectors. Every sector – from healthcare, law and retail to logistics, education, finance, agriculture and industry – needs its own artificial intelligence solution. Value lies not merely in producing the model, but in developing reliable, measurable systems that integrate that model into organisations’ day-to-day operations and deliver commercial results. Turkey can make its mark in artificial intelligence at this very level. Now is the time to act; the moment is ripe. It is with this awareness that we founded franchie.ai, and we will scale it globally with the same vision.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, our people. We have incredibly valuable people who invest in themselves. One of our founding partners is a software engineer who has been developing his expertise in artificial intelligence for years. Our other co-founder has spent years advising global brands and designed the AI brand recognition process at franchie.ai. It is a source of pride to see such people involved in a start-up. What Turkey lacks in this field is not talent, but the start-ups and brands that channel that talent in the right direction. We need to nurture and support them. They are the ones who will lead us to success.

“The world has established the overarching model. We must build the layer on top of that model which carries out the actual work and generates commercial results. Turkey can make a difference at this level.”

The franchise ecosystem is not a structure that grows on its own. Brands, consultants, lawyers, investors, trade fairs, the media, technology providers and operational teams all come together to form an ecosystem.

We, too, set out to tackle a problem that arose from within this ecosystem. That is why we want to grow alongside the sector.

Establishing a global franchise technology company from Turkey is not merely our company’s objective. Such a success would also be a success for the sector. The sector’s success is Turkey’s success.

To succeed on a global scale. That is our sole aim in everything we do. We’re starting with franchise sales in the sector; that’s where we need to make our first breakthrough. But our goal has always been the global market! We want to break out of Turkey and set the global standard within the franchise ecosystem, and we believe this is possible. With the sector’s support, we’ll do our country proud. Because the opportunity is right there on the table, and we’re the first in Turkey to reach out for it.

That alone is motivation enough.