The history of A Data Pro is a series of new divisions, new activities, new clients, internal promotions and…internal marriages.
We’ve asked people who started some of the crucial activities to tell us about the exciting times they have had. We’ll publish snippets from their stories.
Starting the Research and Profiles section in 2004
Back in 2004, Anton Todorov, a young indexer in the company, saw a chance to do something to his liking when he learned that Research and Profiles section can be set up inside the company. Anton’s business plan got the go-ahead, he picked a team of soul mates and the first jobs started. The data miners had to find unsavoury information about a prince, work out a forecast on global paper prices for two hours, mine loads of financial data, etc. Some of the pioneers are already high-ranking executives in other sectors, but their followers have kept growing the rich database on Southeast Europe created in those days.
Anton is still with the company but now he is head of the Business Development team.
Taking charge of the Business Development section in 2010
“The first project we won taught us how not to write projects, a valuable experience you can only learn the hard way,” said Anton, the first and for some time the only business developer of the company. The contract was for staff training under the “Human Resources Development” operational programme in cooperation with a Bulgarian university, which made it very complicated.
Since then a lot of things have changed. The team of one has grown to a team of three, winning projects that enabled the company to develop state-of-the-art indexing and content management systems with EU co-financing. Anton, Raya and Avgustina are also the engine of product development and innovation.
Current plans and aspirations
Anton’s beloved children are his latest approved projects – one is for automatic generation of industry reports, the other involves developing an NLP system that will read texts and analyse them. It will be able to catch subtle differences, e.g. whether the word “apple” refers to Apple Inc or Newton’s apple.
