US-based startup Derya founded by Mert Turna RC 23 and Oğuzhan Karaca RC 23, has secured $1.1 million in preseed funding. The investment round included Y Combinator, Turkish venture capital pioneer 212, and Ubicloud cofounder Umur Çubukçu RC 97. Derya is also part of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program.
Derya provides an end-to-end AI infrastructure designed to automate freight forwarding and logistics. By replacing slow, manual processes with an automated engine, it manages documentation, carrier qualification, shipment tracking, and compliance. The funding will scale its operations, logistics financing, and data processing capacity.
urna and Karaca taught themselves to code and started earning money in ninth grade by building websites, subsequently creating many projects together. They state that they were always interested in machinery and traveling far away, a natural link to logistics technologies:
“We are first and foremost problem solvers. We are especially drawn to legacy industries such as logistics, where the problems are not obvious from the outside because the work is so operationally complicated. Freight is fragmented, cyclical, and difficult for any single incumbent to fully own. That creates room for new companies to enter if they combine cyclical financial stress of asset heavy competitors with a technological advantage.”
Turna and Karaca believe RC was helpful in making them both very analytical yet deeply in touch with the social aspects of work: “Debate, friendships, and the school’s international environment gave us a broader creativity that has been immensely helpful in finding opportunities and building startups, as well as working on more abstract disruptive strategies within our industry.
