Business Development Manager – Bahrain

Business Development Manager – Bahrain

at Tarabut Gateway Bahrain
ROLE
: Business Development Manager

REPORTS TO
: Chief Commercial Officer (Interim), Head of Business Development

POST
: Permanent, Full Time

BASED
: Manama, Bahrain

TRAVEL
: May be required as part of the role

INTRODUCTION & STORY SO FAR

Tarabut Gateway (TG) is the first and largest regulated Open Banking platform in the MENA, with offices in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the UAE. TG connects a regional network of banks and FinTechs via a universal application programming interface (API). By offering tools that allow the facilitation and distribution of personalized financial services, TG enables financial institutions to build a new world of financial services in MENA.

From our earliest days, we quickly became the region’s first applicant to a ‘regulatory sandbox’ through the Central Bank of Bahrain.

The clear objective is to build an infrastructure that accelerates an industry transformation. A multisided platform that connects banks, FinTechs, merchants, in the MENA region all on one platform, enabling a new realm of partnerships to be forged.

Fast forward to today, TG is in partnership with the largest banks in many countries. Our products ready to be shipped to several markets. At present we are focusing on scaling up our software engineering and product team to continue to better serve the lives of all 550 million people in the region.

This is the beginning of our journey, and as we see early stage fintech start to emerge in other jurisdictions, there is no better time than now for the TG Platform to play its part in driving this new realm of financial services in MENA.

BOARD & INVESTMENT

In 2021, TG broke records by securing USD 25 million in funding, including the largest FinTech seed round in MENA history and investment from Tiger Global.

Abdulla Almoayed: CEO & Founder, Tarabut Gateway is joined by partners from Lumia Capital, Tiger Global and Target Global.

CULTURE & ENVIRONMENT

Working for TG could be the biggest challenge of your career! You will be exposed to every function of the business, have dialogues with inspiring colleagues that have unique ideas, and be given more autonomy than before to execute your ideas to scale. You will be challenged, held accountable and expected to run like it’s your own business.

Curiosity is the gateway to learning. Thinking differently is key to our success. We don’t like normal, we prefer to create new rules for the game and redefine the status quo by challenging conventional thinking.

We have distributed teams in the UK, Dubai, Bahrain, India and Saudi Arabia.

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES

As one of our earliest business development hires, you’ll play a key role supporting our aggressive expansion plans. You’ll report to our Chief Commercial Officer and collaborate closely with our CoE team, Product, Compliance and Technology.

Our team’s mission is to spot, develop and close new business opportunities and penetrative use cases we can exploit to deliver and delight our clients and customers within our target markets. Our team are acutely aware of key metrics regarding transactions, aggregated accounts, Fintech acquisition and bank integrations.

You’ll have a great amount of ownership and autonomy, working as a team to map, prospect, qualify, pitch, negotiate and close new FinTechs and banks in a methodical way that aligns our wider commercial strategy with customer satisfaction. You’ll enjoy brainstorming to create new strategies, value proposition, agreeing on goals, and ensuring such goals are met.

You’ll understand our capabilities (product readiness), onboarding process, and value proposition, and identify sales and services that would appeal to new clients, as well as sourcing new leads. You’ll be eloquent and confident with sales pitches and be able to multi-task several projects/sales activities/pipelines at a time. You’ll be extremely relationship driven, ensuring professional introductions, developing new relationships and partnership synergies, and working with the team to ensure they turn into long-standing customers.

You’ll be able to manage pipeline as well as pipeline structure and build cadence in our CRM for strategic deal flow collateral to support with continuous improvement of the sales cycle. You’ll own your own performance reporting and regularly update the CRM. We’ll rely on you to support building market intelligence and data and bring feedback and research into the Commercial team and wider teams (e.g. Product) for TG benefit, competitive advantage, product roadmap planning, pipeline building, revenue forecasting, and decision making internally in the business

You’ll be a fantastic networker and keen to raise the company and profile of TG by representing us at relevant industry events. We’ll rely on you to keep up to date with industry developments, competitor activity and market trends in the Fintech and Banking landscape. You’ll be transparent, providing regular communication on business development activities, raise risk and celebrate success as a team. With your experience, you’ll be confident at achieving and exceeding targets. You’ll always be mindful of regulations and ensuring compliance and professionalism regarding your activities. You’ll collaborate with wider teams on bids, pitches and sign-offs where relevant.

You will be an active contributor to supporting team growth and delivery as we continue to create a progressive, modern technology company. We seek team players that have low ego but high ambition. You’ll want to join a mission driven company, building a world class customer experience, creating a market leading technology culture, and inspiring a high performing sales team.

EXPERIENCE REQUIRED

Experienced business development manager dealing preferably with banks/FinTech customers

Strong track record of results in business development and KPIs
Experience with market mapping, lead generation, pitching and bid tenders

Experience with new marketing initiatives
Experience building a business development ‘desk’/clientele from scratch

Ability to negotiate and close deals in a professional and methodical way
Ability to discuss how your works aligns to the wider commercial strategy

Experience working to specific timeframes and budgets
Experience initiating and improving sales activities

Experience using a CRM consistently
Data driven and customer analysis skills

Excellent written and verbal communication
Comfortable working in an early-stage start-up, dealing with times of ambiguity, high pace, and embracing change

Rolodex of contacts in this space an advantage
Excellent English speaking a must and Arabic speaking a plus

Experience with local and remote/distributed teams a plus