hello everyone and welcome to a gambling insiders exclusive interview with Indra Law Group CEO Chris TV tree artists Chris Tucker took out his new role in March and was immediately confronted with the impact of the current virus pandemic but now though as different countries exit lockdown at different speeds Chris recently set out his plans on how he will take the supply of forward in a long term and that's one of the topics he'll talk to us about today hi Chris thanks for joining us I didn't thank you thank you that's no problem at all to start off with Chris you've been at interlocks since 2007 could you just talk us through your journey from joining the company to becoming group CEO absolutely so I joined into a lot as you very well said back in 2007 I was hired as an information security officer and back then I had the accountability to create the information security and cyber security frameworks for the company to manage certifications as well as intellectual property protection and so on so in 2010 also being elected as vice president of global technology association based in the United States aisaka and did not give you the opportunity not only to understand the global effect of technology in several industries but also to again a better understanding on how the saving of technology professions really took place in 2013 I have been assigned with creating the innovation framework for inter lot and this gave me the opportunity to know more about the company much more than I knew I said as an information security officer but then again I would like to say that especially for the security profession that this it is hugely important to get to know the company that we work for to understand the business objectives to understand what you're going to protect so this as an experience really was really really delightful for me in a 2015 I was elected chair of the board high chakra and God gave me the ability to say the group strategy of this huge technology Association and also to understand a little bit better how boards operate in the United States in 2017 I got signed by internal that the office of the CEO in order to run technology transformation projects then in 2019 in 2017 I also I took the responsibility for technology operations so anything that has to do with the technology services and operations that the company provided locally was under my accountability in 2019 I was appointed as Group C Services and delivery officer being responsible for the implementation of all of the solutions that the company provides to its customers and here on the dais Group CEO of introduct so it's a long journey you obviously know the company very well but how we found your first few months in the CEO role it's really exciting I'm really excited and this is mainly for two reasons first of all interlock is it's a global family it's a global family of people that are very engaged wonderful wonderful people to work with and very passionate customers to work with as well so I'm really really excited about that the second reason is that really of challenges and especially what you said in introduction about being appointed CEO and also having to manage the public debt crisis that's a huge challenge but they also great opportunity for me as well so during the first three months what I really did was to create a plan and execute it step by step during the first month I had very organized the company at a group level putting the right people in the right positions and preparing the strategy for the implementation of its new strategy so these were very well until now and we're very very can you speak about the future of the company and they said growth as well I mean it's good that you like challenges because as you say em this has been one of the most challenging times for the industry as a whole name can really remember I'm four into a lot specifically what exactly was was the impact of of curve in nineteen the impact of profit was mainly due to the lakh dollars we have seen in many countries that's one thing and the second one is the posing or cancellation of exports events around the world so we faced the full knockdowns in jurisdictions life in the ulid mota we have faced full of downs in australia or partial knockdowns in the in the United States nevertheless this impact in the market did not disrupt into a lot and the good result that came out of it was a really good testing of our continuity capabilities so internet had that business continuity planning in place it tested business continuity plan by the time the coronavirus in the world interlocked took immediate measures and criterion by cancelling flights around the world and making sure that our people are safe because our people he wasn't is the number one priority decision for people for interlock and we also we were also able to directly work from home by enabling God continue to plan without seen any disruption in our and our business without the first trucks already have their remote endpoints ready and we managed to send everybody home and continue operating from from there so it was a very good test of our ability to mark the crisis but it's also a sign for the day to come because one of the decisions we have made is to permit people work more intensively and more regularly from home in order to give this benefit to people and making so that their productivity is very very high as program during the copy fun day it's good to hear as an organization you know you've um you've caught with the pandemic which obviously have affected everyone well the next question wanna talk to you about that your recent q1 results obviously last week you reported them and obviously the pandemic and other factors led to a 47% year in your fall in revenue and also 50% with with even though how is intra intra looking to manage a return to growth in in the short term first of all so returning to growth this target that will be exceeds who are any strategy that will have implemented you want 2020 was mainly impacted by changes regulatory changes in boogie area and they also due to the developments in our neighbor country in the in Turkey and nevertheless during q1 2010 we have seen a growth of transactions in the United States and we have also seen technology contract they are operating very well so on the other hand become the positive like what happens in the United States and the potential of the company there on the other kind we've had to manage these two events in Bulgaria and Turkey living those aside our strategy for the next day is to invest and unlock the capability affair of interlock and this is why we have developed a new strategy that is based on five pillars but really the component its next day for unluckiness its potential I say I just say before I go to that the description of that new strategy I would like to say that since you are internal hub has already managed to achieve a great extent of results so within the pandemic would have managed to implement a new is core solution in Peru we have managed to pihl's deals with more operators about the esports a worldwide we have managed to develop a brand new product we call Lotus xi4 internet lotteries and we have also managed to close deals to make deals for implementing blotto 6i in three states in the US and in one country in the European Union among other achievements in the US and Europe what I'm trying to say is that this new organization of intra law that is based on a very strong and robust technology Factory on a very forward-thinking commercial division on a very disciplined financial division and on a brand-new and very forward-looking services division this new structure will lead us into the next day and stop us implement our our new strategy of course and describe right away sure yeah my my final question for you is looking to the future what are your long-term plan so if you can tell us what your strategy that would be great but also I'm a CEO considered a CEO what kind of personals or long-term goals of have you gone with the company so this again relates to it is reflected to our new strategy so we have failed five main targets the first one is to achieve business innovation through technology being used as an enabler and this is shootin important because what we witness worldwide during the past decade is the rapid proliferation of new technologies in several industries and how those technologies create vital on those industries and I will give you a few examples in order to understand that so according to to IDC there was a projection a few years ago a forecast a few years ago that in 2014 will be having something like 50 zettabytes of data worldwide we see an acceleration the in the in the creation of data this is forecasted to reach 175 that in 2025 and zettabyte is like a tree on gigabytes it's a huge amount of data so why are data so important they are hugely important because data when correlated well when combined when crosses they cannot create information and this information in turn can be used in order to create in products new services to improve existing products to make more informed decisions and to at the end of the day to create final business model and this is a huge need for the lottery and sports betting settles in order to be able to be trigger to the next day now the end points the the collectors of the data are those technologies that are proliferating very very rapidly during the past years like mobile phones IOT devices and any important that can be used by by play right on the other hand you can have the analytics those processing entities and that really create information out of data and we have new technologies there such as a RI such as anything that has to do with creating value out out of data if you put this together you will really understand how data information technology and technology as a call can create new volume and can drive an industry a company into the future so target number one is technology to be able to permit us to drive us the business innovation target number two is to improve our community of service the quality of services that we provide to our customers and visitors we have the dedicated services division in order to achieve that in order to improve to centralize and improve the services that we provide to achieve economies of scale and at the same time add more value to the customer target number three is to focus on business to business and business to government contracts technology contracts especially in unity in jurisdictions like the United States those technology contracts are one of the three economic drivers of inter lot which we've seen them doing better and we see huge potential in in receiving more value from this technology contract so we will focus in increasing that dot rather a fourth target is around business to customer or what we call in the gaming of black industry the lottery industry the sports betting industry partnerships in order to acquire new license in order for us to become operators this is again a very very important driver of the economics of the financials of interlock and we are already in discussions no need to achieve that and the fifth target is about our capital structure and the optimization of our capital structure that they will lead us through the next day for enchilada here we are very very excited with implementing the strategy we started implementing the strategy and we strongly believe that we can be the drivers for changing the industries themselves so we're he's excited about well it sounds like a very very comprehensive plan for 43 the best of luck with your role and thank you for your time for this interview thank you thank you so much for the opportunity thanks a lot