Diego Bleeckx - Participant 2020-2021
“l became much more organized, learned how to nurture a lead and gained a good grasp of how to develop a business.”
Role
Diego was responsible for developing the activities of Unifly in Latin America from Bogota. After Europe and North-America, Unifly wanted to explore new markets.
Responsibilities
Diego’s main responsibility was to sell Unifly to the Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSP’s) and Civil Aviation Authorities (CAA’s) in Colombia. UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) was a pretty new concept in the region and required support from Diego in helping define its characteristics.
Back in Belgium due to covid, Diego provided support to the product and sales teams. He worked on the business case, value proposition, pricing approach, market estimation, … Quite challenging for someone who had no prior business education!
How he benefited
For Diego, it was rather demanding to start from a blank page in several LATAM countries: it required a lot of motivation, setting his own goals and priorities, defining the strategy and establishing the right contacts. Moreover, being locked down abroad proved more challenging than he expected.
“At the end of the day, I definitely became more resilient and adaptable and am now prepared for the next setback when it will come”, he concludes laughing.
The company – Unifly
Founded in 2015 and based in Antwerp, Unifly is a software company that developed a platform for the safe integration of drones in airspace. This award-winning spin-off company of VITO (the Flemish institute for technological research) specializes in aviation web and mobile app development. Its main mission is to develop applications that facilitate drone traffic in the very-low-altitude airspace.
“Diego did a great job in expanding the Unifly network in South America. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, he had to return to Belgium. But he made a major contribution to building the 2021 business and pricing models for the Strategic 2021 and beyond plan.”