“How do you expand into new markets while integrating an acquisition at the same time?”

Open English

Head of Expansion / Director Commercial Development · Multi-market expansion incl. M&A-related work

Led expansion and commercial development across Spain, Portugal, Turkey, India and Colombia, including M&A-related work.

Context

Expanding an edtech business into new European, Asian and Latin American markets while also integrating acquired businesses into the commercial operating model. That model was a Colombian one, and Turkey and Portugal ran on very different operational assumptions — bringing them in meant reconciling two ways of working, not just migrating systems.

Action

Led market entry and commercial development across Spain, Portugal, Turkey, India and Colombia.
Built out a roughly 40-seat call-center operation across Turkey and Portugal to support commercial growth — staffed in the markets being sold into rather than centralised at headquarters.
Contributed to M&A-related work involving English Ninjas in Turkey (acquired November 2021) and Enguru in India (acquired August 2022), alongside a wider deal team — not as the sole executor of either acquisition.

Result

Roughly €3M in new net revenue attributable to this expansion work.

Lesson

Integration planning matters as much as the deal itself — an acquisition only pays off once it's operationally merged.

The public record

Both acquisitions are confirmed public fact, and the company's own December 2021 release puts the Spain and Portugal launch on the record alongside them. The 40-seat call centre and the €3M net-revenue attribution are internal figures with no public trace — expected for attribution data, and supplied rather than sourced.