After completing his Political Science and Public Administration education at Uludağ University, Tugrul Sarikaya started his master’s degree at the same university. Afterwards, he went to America to study language. Following his language education, he studied Web Development at City College of San Francisco and started his first e-Commerce venture, Recro Garage Inc. He experienced Magento, a high-level e-Commerce content management system, at Recro Garage and programmed it according to his needs.

He marketed the automotive products he brought by sea from Turkey simultaneously on Amazon and eBay channels through the Magento-based system he established. Recro Garage Inc., which he ran from San Francisco for four years. He sold his company to a Houston-based company. After working in Houston for a certain period of time, he returned to California and turned to video production as he desired. 35Video LLC, which he founded, quickly achieved the expected success. He ran the visual programs of ISS Guckenheimer, one of the world’s largest food and beverage organization companies. He designed illustrative visuals for Vizru, a multinational start-up in Silicon Valley. He carried out visual promotional activities for many restaurants and businesses. The “wedding videography” works he created with his team were awarded the best videographer of 2020 by theKnot, the world’s largest wedding organization platform.

Tugrul Sarıkaya returned to Turkey in 2020 and completed the editing of his documentary Balkancisco, which explores the intense interest in Balkan culture and music in San Francisco. Balkancisco is a documentary that explores the strong influence of Balkan music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through the personal stories of musicians from different cultural backgrounds, the film highlights how this music transcends borders and unites people from different backgrounds. Balkancisco has received over thirty awards at international festivals and continues to receive awards. The awards it has received include the “Excellent Documentary Award” from the San Francisco New Concept Film Festival (USA), the “Balkan Focus Award” from the International Film Festival Glasgow (Scotland-UK), the “Best Music Documentary Award” from the ReelHeART International Film and Screenplay Festival (Canada), the “Best Documentary Award” from the Berlin International Art Film Festival (Germany), the “Honorary Award” from the ARFF Berlin (Germany), and the “Honorary Award” from the Bridges International Film Festival (Greece), among many others. It has also been awarded “Special Selection” and screened in many prestigious film and documentary festivals such as TRT International Documentary Awards (Turkey), DokuBaku (Azerbaijan), San Francisco Frozen Film Festival (USA), PRVI KADAR-INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Bosnia and Herzegovina), International Documentary Festival of Ierapetra Awards (Greece), International Sound & Film Music Festival (Croatia).

Tuğrul Sarıkaya shares his entrepreneurship, e-commerce, visual marketing and various life experiences under the roof of Doğru Dijital company and Medya Akademi and serves as a project coordinator.