Bitpanda, the European digital investment platform and Austria’s first unicorn, has named Irina Nicoleta Scarlat as its first Chief Growth Officer (CGO), effective immediately.

In this newly created C-level role, Irina will take over Bitpanda’s business development and marketing teams, overseeing and driving the company’s expansion plans. She will be leading the company’s complete growth strategy, uniting the expertise from across multiple teams and country locations to uncover new opportunities and continue to rapidly expand the company’s global footprint.

Irina brings more than a decade of tech industry experience to Bitpanda. Her latest role was as the Global Head of Growth at Revolut, having joined the company in 2018 where she drove the growth of the local market from 20,000 to approximately 1.5M users. She built Revolut’s growth machine, led the growth teams in CEE and, later on, their Global Growth department, shaping Revolut’s growth journey from 1M to 15M users globally.

Before Revolut, Irina built and led Uber’s marketing function in Romania, shaping their local strategy and launching key regional projects and initiatives that grew the market to 1M users and expanded local operations to three cities.

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Eric Demuth, Bitpanda CEO, said: “Irina has a proven track record of breaking into and rapidly scaling new markets in the fintech industry. At Bitpanda, we have ambitious growth plans and as we continue in our hypergrowth journey, we are confident that with Irina leading our country management and expansion efforts, as well as our Business Development and Marketing teams, we will not only diversify into new markets but will also accelerate the growth of our current operations. Her unique experience in fast-paced environments combined with her ambition, drive and global mindset will help us bring the world of investing closer to everyone, everywhere.”

Irina Nicoleta Scarlat, Bitpanda CGO, commented: “Europe is lagging behind the US & Asia markets when it comes to investment literacy and many people are unaware of the possibilities they have at their fingertips. I strongly believe in Bitpanda’s mission to change this by offering people instant access to financial products as well as the resources they need to properly understand them. On top of all this, Bitpanda is a company with an amazing culture, balancing hypergrowth with care for their teams, and I immediately sensed this when speaking with both the founders and executive team. I am delighted to be joining this incredible company and am confident that we’ll grow Bitpanda into the number one investment platform in Europe and beyond, together.”

This year, Bitpanda surpassed several milestones, including growing our base to more than  2.5 million users and 500 employees, as well as receiving one of the largest Series B rounds in Europe with an additional extension in May. To ensure the continued scale of Bitpanda, Irina’s experience will be used to drive the company’s expansion efforts, ensuring the business is ready for the next stage of its ambitious growth journey.

Throughout 2020, Bitpanda opened offices in France, Spain, Turkey and Italy, opening an innovation hub in Krakow in December that saw the amount of Bitpanda’s team members double. The digital investment platform now intends to expand into new European markets, with plans to open a tech hub and office in Barcelona, alongside future talent hubs in London, Milan, Paris, Berlin and Istanbul.

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