Anna Motruk: How Parimatch Tech Is Diversifying Across Its Full Platform

The text version of the Parimatch Tech deputy CEO Anna Motruk's interview for the SBC Summit Barcelona 2022 is below.

Welcome, everyone! We are here at SBC Barcelona Summit, and I’m joined by Anna Motruk, Deputy CEO of Parimatch Tech, a company very much in the spotlight these days. So, can you tell me what kind of transition Parimatch is undertaking this year? Especially focusing on its new tech development.

We had a huge transition period, and it started long ago. It was a transformation into Parimatch Tech, we finalized it in 2021, and it was a great feeling among employees, within our partners, when everybody recognized all our efforts. Nowadays, we have another kind of transformation related more to diversification: opening new offices, new R&D centres, and B2B development. Before this, our platform was a top-secret element of our business, but I was happy when we realized that we could share and provide it to others. It is about more opportunities, diversification, countries development, and new joint ventures. It’s very exciting. The only thing we have realized with diversification, because we’ve been doing it for nine months, is that you need to be focused. If you’re not focused, diversification will be like an explosion: you will go in a different direction and not control it. So, we are trying to keep the focus here. 

Okay, you’ve mentioned here about a direction, and one thing that always grabs me about Parimatch is that, as a company, you’re very focused on proprietary technology, building your own. And where is that kind of direction taking you? Are you looking to launch new divisions, technologies, and products, and where do you see that innovation happening? 

Everywhere, in all the parts of our platform and content that we create, we need to develop monthly because our industry is really quick, and if you stop doing something, you’re already not interesting and outdated. So, it’s everywhere, the development, where something most exciting should be is content. I think because the content is something that everybody is fighting for and wants to find the content that will be useful for each country because there are similar popular worldwide games, but still, there are some cultural differences and expectations. So, that’s content, that’s payment services, and that’s the speed of everything. Once you get the speed and propose it to your partners and customers, speed definitely will be the winning strategy. 

So, does Parimatch, is it turnaround thinking that you have to control every element of the technology stack now or are you still open to working with partnerships with third parties or is that focused singularly in-house? 

We are open to collaborations, and there are different kinds of collaborations when we propose some module of our system to somebody. For example, in sports, we’re super good at sports content, and everything related: we are getting some games we didn’t have before. So, the partnership is about the future and the exchange of opportunities. 

You’ve got very, very seasoned tech experience, and this is more from your standpoint. What part of your job do you find the hardest in a leadership position? 

Actually, recruiting. Here’s again, the hardest things are the biggest opportunities, so the difficult thing in the recruitment process for us is intercultural integration: to unite people who speak different languages. Because before the war, we had R&D centres that mostly understood each other in the same area, but now we’re integrating English-speaking teams, and that helps us to hire more and to improve our procedures and all our elements as the technology organization.

For example, some SDK or elements can be read and understood by a developer or engineer anywhere in the world, so we improve them to make it easy for engineers to just come to us, check it, get it, and do the coding. 

Providing those changes, I mean, you’ve had to look kind of inward and change your leadership structure. Can you explain a bit more about that top-level change that Parimatch took? 

I think that change is mainly connected to the increase in our speed. When you have a model with co-CEOs, you have a broader overview of everything and cover a vast range of opportunities. But, the more traditional model, one CEO, and two Deputy CEOs, is about speed, so you can quickly reconcile everything, decide, go on, and develop further. 

So, this leads to the final question. I mean, we’re here in Barcelona, and we’re talking about the topics of what’s next, the innovation. From your leadership perspective, what do you view as the biggest challenge for the next six months and the biggest opportunity within the industry’s short-term vision? 

The biggest one for me will always be the war, and the challenge will be to continue to support the people, to continue to support the country, personally and as a big holding, so that will be the challenges. The biggest opportunities, I see, are joint ventures and collaborations. We have a lot of negotiations with different partners, they are all very excited, and I hope we will announce something huge soon.