Cbonds
Head of Business Development
“Expand a Russia-anchored fixed-income data platform into the MENA institutional market.”
The situation
Established financial data business with a mature product and a core market concentrated in Russia and CIS. The mandate was to open the MENA institutional segment with no existing relationships in the region.
What I did
Designed the MENA market entry plan and executed it personally — prospect research, product demonstrations, institutional webinars, and enterprise contract negotiations.
Documented and codified the commercial methodology in Notion; introduced the firm's first formal partner program.
Deployed Apollo for prospect research and Power BI for pipeline visibility and commercial reporting.
Introduced AI-assisted and low-code automation across the lead handling and qualification workflow, reducing manual overhead significantly.
Outcomes
~20% total revenue growth; ~15% growth in recurring revenue.
~30% increase in sales output and ~40% reduction in client integration time following automation rollout.
Partner program launched; full MENA pipeline established from zero.
Each metric is from period reporting at the time of engagement and verifiable against employer records on request.