Jenthe van Gastel - Participant 2020-2021
“I became more confident about making independent choices and taking responsibility for them.”
Role
Jenthe was tasked with setting up the first Asian office of Faktion in Singapore and further grow their local business development activities.
Responsibilities
Setting up a local subsidiary and being tasked with business development in a completely new market while also working on her own meant that Jenthe had to wear many different hats: from online marketing and proposal writing to operations and project management.
She also oriented the company towards targeting sales, a critical element for a startup with high-performing technology products.
How she benefited
Jenthe learned how to build a solid business development strategy and to approach sales in a data-driven way, enabling her to better evaluate and forecast performance. While the coronavirus pandemic complicated matters, she learned to let things go as time passed, taking the situation as it came and persevering by focusing on other things, besides new business development, such as project and account management for important current clients.
The company – Faktion
Founded in 2016, Faktion is a tech scale-up specialised in building artificial intelligence solutions. It combines deep industry experience and machine learning expertise, offering AI engineering services as well as “off-the-shelf’ AI products, that are mainly based on Natural Language Processing technology (such as chatbots and intelligent document processing).
“Jenthe succeeded in identifying new leads, engaging with them and closing them. She took on the additional role of account manager and for one account in particular (Singapore Institute of Technology) also worked as project manager.”