In 2012, Ante Pamuković was informed that a Croatian start-up telecommunications company called Infobip was recruiting in sales. With an enthusiastic interest in telecommunications and innovative solutions, he decided to try his luck and applied for his first position with the company.
Fast forward 12 years, Ante sits on Infobips’ Leadership Board as President of International Revenue. Throughout the 12-year period, he has helped Infobip, initially a 200-employee start-up company, turn into a global leading cloud communications platform that currently employs over 4,000 staff.
Ante recalls:
“Up until working with Infobip, I enjoyed working with numbers and auditing, but this area of work was not necessarily my passion. I had never done specific sales work before, but I enjoyed exchanging with people and was interested in the need and demand aspects of this work. I decided to apply to Infobip and received a callback. At the time, Infobip invited candidates to join a one-month academy, which allowed us to have insights into the start-up from industry, platform, product, and marketing aspects. Basically, we were offered an opportunity to demonstrate skills in fast learning, adaptability, as well as teamwork. And as a result, a few of us were rewarded our first Infobip employment contract – mine being an Infobip sales manager.”
Ante’s African adventure
At the time, Africa was one of Infobip’s most important regions, with a particularly successful operation in Nigeria. Ante recalls: “I was asked whether I’d be interested in moving to Tanzania to launch and facilitate Infobip operations there. The opportunity was exciting and terrifying at the same time. I visited Tanzania with a senior colleague and mentor, and several months later, for personal reasons, he decided not to continue with his position and offered me the job of country manager.”
“To be honest, I was questioning whether I could really do it. I still didn’t know the technology well. I was a long way from home, on my own, in a different culture. But at the same time, it all felt exciting. It was a challenge. At the time, I knew the business was growing. I knew things were going well. But it was also very basic back then. For instance, we had an SMS platform interface and APIs with fierce competition. Now that I think back, I could not say that anyone — perhaps with the exception of our CEO and company’s owners — believed that Infobip would grow to what it is now.”
A move across continents
After two years, Ante was invited to join the Asia-Pacific region as regional manager.
“The position was similar to my job in Tanzania but on a much larger scale. It included opening offices in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and more. I was responsible for hiring, management, as well as the sales aspect of the work. During this time, the region had one office in Kuala Lumpur. At the moment, Infobip has 14. Asia remains a very important region to me as I spent eight years there in different leadership roles, traveling around Asia and Australia, establishing our operations, and growing the team.”
Over eight years in APAC, Ante lived in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Singapore, rising from APAC Sales Director to APAC VP of Revenue along the way.
Ante’s time in Singapore was interrupted by COVID-19, and travel restrictions led to him being restricted to an Indonesian hotel for one year.
In 2023 Ante returned home to Croatia as VP of Revenue for Europe, MENA and Africa. He admits: “It had been a fantastic adventure in Asia, but I was happy to come home. We merged three big regions — Europe, Middle East, and Africa — and I took over that role for a year.”
The next move for Ante was his biggest: Joining Infobip’s board and overseeing global revenue efforts.
Infobip Leadership Board
Now, Ante is leading planning efforts, budgeting, and developing strategy, rather than receiving instructions and rolling them out. He explains: “I’m trying to work with the VPs leading the regions, helping them make an impact. They know my background, and I understand their thought processes and the challenges they deal with, so I can pick up on these things and help them execute faster.”
“I have always been very hands-on — traveling to meetings, visiting offices, understanding the dynamics. I noticed early on that when you just depend on what others tell you, you don’t always get the full picture. You can’t pick up on how people or markets are reacting. I always like to see for myself, but not micromanage.”
“We’re still doing that now. We promote people to roles they’d usually have to wait longer for in other companies. This is the beauty of Infobip. And now I like to invest time and effort in bringing people to a higher level. It’s something that creates a lot of value for you later on. I can go on vacation and know that the people who are here can take over and run the business smoothly. It’s something that I think everybody should invest more time in.”
Advice to others forging their own career paths
So what advice would Ante give to young people looking to make their way in a technology company? “I told our new interns recently — and I believe this from the bottom of my heart — a successful career requires patience. You cannot expect to get promoted, or expect a radical change in your career every few months. Our on-demand culture is creating unrealistic expectations in our professional lives.”
“People need time to establish expertise in what they do. They need to showcase that they are almost irreplaceable — that they can be depended upon. I had this great sense of responsibility. I’m not someone who needs seven emails or calls to do something. I would pick it up, take meetings, and proactively send feedback on what I saw working or not working, even when I wasn’t asked to. And I think this sense of becoming someone people can depend on is important.”
According to Ante, young, ambitious people need to invest time in making sure they are working for a company that has pathways to the top. When they have found that company, they should seize the opportunities that present themselves. “If you’re in the right organization and create enough value for it, you will be recognized.”