Mustafa KARABAĞLI- Entrepreneurship story
The seeds of his spirit of entrepreneurship were planted at the age of 6 in his father’s iron workshop. He gained substantial experience by spending all his time out of school in his father’s workshop. During his high school days, he made his first money with the letter notepads on which he printed a picture of his school. He took similar initiatives at the university. He worked in the private sector for a while after he graduated from the Department of Electronics Engineering at METU. As he did in high school, he conducted studies and made organizations with the spirit of entrepreneurship. By taking courage from the rector’s words ‘you are equipped to set up your own business’, he decided to be his own boss in 1991 after he graduated.
The Electrical Electronics Engineer (MSc) Mustafa KARABAĞLI, who entered the business life in 1991 as a 2-year engineer, has been trying to cope with the dynamics of the region and country and on the other hand, has given several battles in the last 30 years from the years when the information and technology were difficult to access but changing very quickly, up to date when the information can be accessed very easily. His business life which started in an extremely neglected place of 30-40 m2 by borrowing, required him to overcome several difficulties at first. His motive to do business related to the education he received and his continuous innovative philosophy conduced towards having a notebook computer in 1993 as soon as he paid his debts.

In 1994, Mustafa KARABAĞLI who had not even served as a solider yet had to stand to the 1994 crisis during his military service as a shareholder and owner of 3 companies all of which engaged in the electronics sector and afterward, merged under a single roof. With the conscious investment he made, thought of turning the crisis into opportunity, and giving weight to R&D, he achieved to grow out of this difficult period.

The companies of Mustafa KARABAĞLI which continued their activities in the electronics and information sector in the following years had expanded their range of products and technologies and thereby, started to forge ahead of the main industry from subindustry. The investments in developing technology and R&D activities have been the most important factor that enabled Mustafa KARABAĞLI companies to survive and thus, achieved to turn the crisis into an opportunity while the US Dollar was devalued 100% in one day in the country during the 2001 crisis.

In addition to R&D activities for the products produced, there were a lot of difficulties for testing and approval processes and the results were obtained with the efforts and struggles in the test laboratories that lasted for many days all the nights long. Sometimes, failure to get the desired results discouraged but he acted with the philosophy of now or never instead of the philosophy of let’s try later and thus, he followed his work by working until morning in the corridors of these laboratory and certification institutions and tried to motivate his teammates.

The intensive R&D studies which were initiated on metering and monitoring the energy in the early 2000s have brought results in a short time and the production of electronic electricity meters was started in 2002. Over the years, the meters called Smart Meters have been developed based on the philosophy that energy must not only be measured but managed,
In 2012, he thought that the existing shareholding structure of his company was preventing managing the companies easily and taking fast decisions and for this reason, he wanted to end this situation and acquired all the shares of the company by putting all his cash and non-cash assets and getting into debt and started the life as a debtor. Although he was 46 years old when he acquired the shares from the company’s shareholders, he did not lose his excitement and continued his journey with a company where he owns 100% of shares and he can realize his hopes and dreams.

The first smart meter design and applications were realized in Turkey and a solution was delivered to the electric network loss and leakage issue of Turkey with the products of the new energy metering and monitoring idea developed and the investments made in this field.

With the implementation of the project in regions where Loss and Leakage are high but products and technology are used, these rates have dropped even below Turkey's average. In the process of developing Smart Meter products and their acceptance by the market, it covers a process starting from selling meters as street trading to being represented in ESMIG (European Smart Meter Industry Group).

Once, he opened a street stand in front of an energy company that he could not convince since he was new about the use of his products, and continued his struggle by saying "If I cannot convince you, I will tell the community this". Perhaps, he made history as the first person to sell smart meters on a street stand at the door of an energy company. In addition to this, as he has been constantly aware of the importance of R&D, the importance he has attached to R&D and his persistent studies resulted in his company being registered as an R&D Center by the Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology at the end of 2015.

His expertise in metering and electronics led him to realize that there are also actions to be taken in the water mains and thereby, he has started activities in the management of Water meters and Water mains since 2015 and started to offer solutions for the meters and Smart Water Mains produced since 2016.

Besides, he has taken the opportunities offered by electronic technology into account and started activities in lighting products and technologies where he also realized the advantages of LED technology in lighting.

In addition to this, the transformation in the industry is followed and investments and studies are made in this regard. It is obvious that Turkey's development can be possible with the export of value-added products. For this reason, the importance attached to R&D increasingly continues, and the  R&D centers in Ankara and Istanbul, as well as in Izmir, where the company headquarters is situated, entered into service in 2018.
The goal is to make the brand ‘’LUNA’’ that we use in energy management and technological products one of the 10 Turkish brands recognized in the world.