ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — With a Kurdish man at the helm, Chobani was named one of the ten most innovative companies in the world for 2017 by the American monthly magazine Fast Company after the company poked fun at its industry rivals suggesting their yogurts contain unappetizing additives.
“I don’t want more, I just want to do more. Whatever I see in the world that discourages me, I answer with Chobani,” Ulukaya said. ‘Çoban’ means shepherd in Turkish.
Amazon, Google and the ride-sharing platform Uber topped the recent list, which weighs “impact” among its most important criteria for the annual award. Chobani was ranked No. 9, ahead of Spotify music.
In 2014, Ulukaya donated $2 million to the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria.
In addition to expanding the company’s share of the overall yogurt market to $1.5 billion in annual revenue, its founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya rewarded employees with hundreds of millions in shares in 2016.
“I don’t want more, I just want to do more. Whatever I see in the world that discourages me, I answer with Chobani,” Ulukaya said. ‘Çoban’ means shepherd in Turkish.
Amazon, Google and the ride-sharing platform Uber topped the recent list, which weighs “impact” among its most important criteria for the annual award. Chobani was ranked No. 9, ahead of Spotify music.
Ulukaya’s factory in New York state employees more than 600 people with about 30 percent of those being refugees. The entrepreneur was born near the Turkish town of Ilic in Erzincan province and immigrated to the United States in 1994
In 2014, Ulukaya donated $2 million to the besieged Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria.
“Either we will be watching the massacre there and will live on with a guilty conscience, or we will save people,” he told the Daily News at the time.
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