Summary
Commercial strategy and partnerships executive with three decades of creating value across media, fintech, banking, telecom, retail, e-commerce, and HR tech.
My operating pattern is business synergy: connecting assets that normally sit in separate silos — product, content, audience, brand, payments, distribution, and community — into new commercial models. I work at both ends: shaping strategy and getting deals across the line.
Former CPO, CEO, founder, and operator with P&L ownership in the tens of millions, leader-of-leaders experience, and a track record of building product-integrated partnerships with Mastercard, Visa, 3M, Tinkoff, Magnit, Apple, Google, and P&G.
In recent years, I have developed an AI-native operating model that lets me move from strategy to prototype to commercial narrative in days, so brands and internal teams can react to something real rather than a deck.
Experience
WIP Solutions Inc. — Founder · Feb 2022 – Present · Tel Aviv / Remote
Founded talenthunt, an AI-native hiring platform with KYC-verified Work Identity and per-candidate AI agents. Built the company solo end to end: strategy, product, design, code, positioning, and go-to-market. Early clients include TON and inDrive.
I use AI to compress the distance between idea, prototype, narrative, and market test. This allows concepts to become tangible quickly — useful for partnerships, sponsorships, product extensions, and internal alignment.
VTB Group — Deputy Director, Partnership Department / Lifestyle Platform (bank-backed spin-off) — Deputy CEO & Head of Product · Aug 2019 – Feb 2022 · Moscow / Hybrid
As Deputy CEO of Lifestyle Platform, joined as employee #3 and effective co-builder of the izi super-app. Built the company and product organization during COVID, fully distributed. Co-created Magnit Pay, scaling to seven million users and hundreds of millions of RUB in turnover.
Owned the product side of a complex partnership with Magnit, Russia's #2 retailer, across 20,000+ stores. The creative core was a single-QR transaction combining loyalty accrual and card payment. Reliability across 20,000+ retail touchpoints serving millions of daily transactions was core to the deal — any payment friction immediately reduced store throughput.
Maintained direct relationships with Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet — including a six-figure USD GTM grant from Visa. Card-scheme matrix included izi on Mastercard, Magnit Pay on Visa, and wallet-based card-art functionality through Apple Pay and Google Wallet.
As Deputy Director of Partnerships at VTB, built an integrated-partnership pipeline with national champions including Russian Railways, Yandex, Wildberries, major airlines, and grocery chains. Concurrently led and completed a 100+ person migration of the seven-million-user Magnit Pay to the bank's core platform.
daykhin.com — Owner, Fractional Partner to Founders & C-Level · Sep 2017 – Present · Remote
Selective C-level advisory across fintech, payments, HR-tech, e-commerce, retail, and media. Roles included executive sparring partner, fractional CPO, and chief-of-staff-style partner to CEOs and founders.
Notable engagements included a digital-ecosystem operator concept for VTB (a top-2 Russian bank), which unexpectedly led to my Lifestyle Platform super-app trajectory; loyalty-churn analytics and retention design for a major retail chain with multi-million RUB impact; and a retail payment + micro-loan + loyalty concept for a European utilities association.
Ulmart Group — Director, Financial Technologies; Head of Digital Goods & Payments · Jun 2014 – Sep 2017 · Moscow / St. Petersburg
Led payments, financial technologies, and digital goods inside Russia's then-#1 e-commerce company (up to ~7,000 employees) — a high-competition, trust-critical environment where every payment failure is a lost sale and a lost customer.
Embedded streaming, e-books, travel, and digital software into Ulmart's storefront — effectively a "Ulmart's take on Amazon Prime" play, executed under a hard investor-event deadline across two holdings with a common shareholder.
Owned the full payments contour: PSPs, Visa/Mastercard, online lending, installments, and store/courier payment infrastructure. Cashless share grew to ~80% of turnover; online payment commission was reduced by ~10%; 800+ cashboxes were renovated; and an in-house courier mobile app was built for fiscal compliance.
Reliability across hundreds of thousands of orders was a direct revenue lever — every failed payment cost a transaction and a customer.
Launched the Tinkoff / Mastercard co-branded card program, reaching ~50K cards. Structured partner co-investment in cashback and activation (a seven-figure USD deal), with the card explicitly designed as a "second card in the wallet" and most spend happening outside Ulmart.
TNT Broadcasting Network — Director, Special Projects & Business Development · Apr 2007 – Nov 2008 · Moscow
Owned all non-advertising content monetization for a federal TV channel.
Portfolio included licensing, publishing, DVDs, brand integrations, web, interactive SMS-IVR services, and early digital streaming and VOD. Key properties included Dom-2, Comedy Club, Nasha Russia, Shkola Remonta, and dom2.ru.
Built a fully autonomous P&L in the tens of millions of USD per year, representing 10%+ of channel revenue. Led a team of 20+, mostly direction heads across publishing, interactive services, sponsorship integrations, licensing, digital, and in-house finance.
Major initiatives included a 3M product-integrated licensing model, monthly Dom-2 magazine at ~720K copies, millions of DVD copies per year, Russian Mobile VAS Award-winning interactive services, and Russia's first paid pre-air HD streaming for Nasha Russia.
Solvo International — Director, Business Development · Aug 2003 – Apr 2007 · Moscow
Built the partnership and distribution engine for an interactive content / VAS provider serving mobile operators.
Monetized major TV, radio and web audiences — including TNT, Channel One, Avtoradio, mail.ru and Humor FM — through mobile-operator revenue-share distribution. Consolidated a single short-number model across regional operators through a trunk-operator deal with MTT.
Grew service range ~7×, achieved full federal coverage, and scaled the business to several million USD per month. Company later exited for an estimated $25M.
Selected Earlier & Parallel Ventures · 1990s – 2015
KMPKV Unlimited / SmsPal — CEO, Co-owner · Jan 2012 – Jul 2015 · Moscow
Co-founded an early SMS-confirmation card-payment service — effectively "Apple Pay before Apple Pay" for a pre-wallet market. Orchestrated a bank + telco + merchant scheme with flat per-transaction economics.
AR2Life — Producer, Business Strategist, Co-owner · Mar 2011 – Jun 2015 · Moscow
Built markerless AR products for print media. Created the MAXIM Ozhivlyator app with three concurrent revenue streams: publisher retainer, iTunes affiliate revenue, and in-app advertising sold through MAXIM's sales house. Second major case: Igromania, a gaming magazine.
Business Synergy Consulting · Own practice, 2009 – 2014
Opportunistic projects across casual gaming, social-network branded content, live-event talent brokering, and commercial concept development.
Rostov Cellular Communications · 1996 – 2001
Commercial lead on the launch of the country's second prepaid cellular system in 1998, including tariff design, dealer network, device sourcing, and brand.
Logoscreen · mid-1990s · first entrepreneurial experience
Own early venture focused on marketing research and BTL activations. Projects included P&G Pampers and Tampax launch programs in pharmacies and maternity hospitals.