Founder of the first companies to constitute the basis on which the industrial firms that make up the present-day Sabancı Group were built,
Hacı Ömer Sabancı was born in Akçakaya, a small village in the province of Kayseri in Central Anatolia. He lost his father when he was only five and, at the age of fourteen, left his native village to try his fortune in the Adana cotton region, travelling the whole distance of 450 kms on foot.