BETBAZAR five year milestone

With B2B worldwide iGaming marketplace, BETBAZAR, recently racking up a successful half-decade of service, we caught up with Chief Executive Officer, Alex Iaroshenko, to get his reflections on reaching the landmark, the biggest challenges that the company has faced along the way and where he sees the business going over the next five years.

For readers out there who aren’t familiar with you or the work you’ve done with BETBAZAR, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be involved with the company?

Sure – my name is Alex Iaroshenko and I’m the CEO of BETBAZAR. As you know, the company is now celebrating its fifth year of operation and I’ve been there from the very beginning, but even before that I’d already accumulated 12-13 years’ experience in the iGaming industry. I started working in sales at Betgenius – where I learnt a lot of the skills that have led me to where I am today – and I have to say on a personal level it’s been a really interesting journey for me. Over the years I’ve found iGaming to be a highly specific and very demanding industry to work in, but it's one that I also really enjoy. You really need to understand the ins and outs and the particulars of doing business in this sector, but all the hard work that you put in is definitely rewarded in terms of the knowledge you acquire and the professionalism of the people you get to work with.

As you mentioned, it’s now BETBAZAR’s 5^th anniversary – a major milestone for a company that has had to overcome some significant challenges along the way. Can you tell us about that journey and why you think you’ve lasted where so many other businesses have failed?

You know, I actually find it quite surprising when I stop and think that the company is already five years old! There’s a big part of me that feels like we’re still working in a start-up because we have people with such broad responsibilities – and that’s a mindset that I’ve always tried to retain as I believe encouraging this kind of atmosphere can lead to very good results. On the other hand, five years is a long time and I think it’s been a challenging period not just for us, but for the industry in general. We actually started just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and I think all the work we did in that period has ultimately been the catalyst for our success. We came into the situation well prepared and we picked up a number of clients who are still with us today, so I think having the adaptability to work in difficult situations has really helped us survive and flourish over the years.

Of course, many of BETBAZAR’s contractors are based in Kyiv, so not long after the pandemic ended, you also had to contend with Russia’s war with Ukraine. How have you dealt with this situation as a company and are there any other major hurdles that you’ve had to overcome? 

Yes, we have a lot of Ukrainian contractors who were affected by the war, so this was a difficult time for everyone concerned. Obviously it’s a very different situation when a large part of your workforce has to leave the country, but I would say the lessons that we learnt during COVID-19 did help in some respects, because we were already working from home and all of our processes were set-up to succeed remotely. We’re still supporting our people in Ukraine and will continue to do so, but that has been one of the biggest challenges for the company on an existential level. On a business level, a lot has changed in the past five years. We started as a sales house for one company with one product and now we have about seven, so we’ve become more of a digital marketplace. I think the term “ecosystem” is often misused, but we’re definitely trying to build something along those lines – though perhaps it’s more of an aquarium than a tropical rainforest!

Given how much the business has changed over the past five years, what would you pick out as some of BETBAZAR’s key highlights in that period and what ones are you most proud of?

You’ve probably heard enough inspirational speakers telling you that the Japanese words for “problem” and “opportunity” are one and the same, but for BETBAZAR it really has been like this! Each time we’ve faced a challenge, it’s opened up new possibilities for us that we’ve always tried to explore. I’m particularly proud of our growth in terms of employees over the past five years and we now have great new professionals in the team who have been absolutely key to our success. We work together as a group and have strategic sessions every quarter where the whole C-level team make the decisions for the company, so it’s definitely not just down to me or my ideas alone. As I mentioned previously, the number of new partners that we’ve taken on is also a major highlight that has given us more opportunities as we’ve continued to grow, and on an internal level we’ve completely rebuilt our IT infrastructure to provide a smoother experience for all our clients.

With five successful years now down in the books, how do you see BETBAZAR evolving over the next five? Is there a specific philosophy that you follow or goal that you want to achieve?

I think diversifying the business is going to be absolutely key. Like an actor who has one great role that people always refer back to, when a company is successful in providing a specific service, sometimes that’s all they get remembered for – and we don’t want to be that actor! I truly want us to become an international digital marketplace where you can find all kinds of products, so we’re going to continue taking on new partners until that goal becomes a reality. Of course, this will mean that we’ll have to enter new markets as well. We’ve already started to look at Latin America and I’d also like us to enter Asia in the coming years too – ideally with a product that we’ve developed in-house. This will obviously require us to take on new staff and I’m excited to see how our company grows. We’ve already gone from four to forty employees without ever losing our boutique philosophy and I hope that we continue to expand in this same spirit going forward.