Dive into our worlds - Alessandro Marasca
From strategy to connection
Since joining Prosus a few months ago, our world has moved fast - ideas and people alike. I sit in Strategy & Operations, the team that helps turn our 100-plus companies into one connected ecosystem.
Our job is to make that ecosystem work smarter together – driving alignment, sharing insight, and turning strategy into execution. We work with CEOs and leadership to implement strategies, set and monitor OKRs, and help translate big goals into tangible progress. Along the way, we connect people across functions and geographies, bridging knowledge gaps and building the partnerships that move ideas faster.
The team also leads some of Prosus’s biggest cross-company efforts – from Synergies and Partnerships to Marketing Intelligence, our Management Model, and now, new business cases for AI agentic workforce.
Day to day I lead our Knowledge Sharing programme: bringing the right experts together to solve common problems. Simple logic – if one company has cracked something, why should another start from scratch?
“If one company is more mature, it helps the other – we work together to overcome challenges.”
Making collaboration real
Prosus is many different companies, markets and strengths. Our role is to find the overlaps – the moments where a shared problem becomes a shared opportunity.
Sometimes that means connecting people across continents. Recently, we brought a personalisation expert from iFood in Brazil to support the eMAG team in Romania. Same challenge, different contexts – and by working together they’re already seeing results.
Trust makes that possible, so we prioritise early, in-person time. Meeting face to face means everything runs faster and smoother once we’re back online.
Building communities around problems
We’ve launched communities around specific business challenges – data analytics, retail media, customer support, personalisation. They’re not built around job titles, they’re built around the problem.
People share best practice, meet virtually, and come together for workshops. A recent advertising session in Amsterdam brought 30 people from across the ecosystem to spot collaboration opportunities we’re now developing further.
We also use a simple prioritisation matrix to focus effort where the business impact is biggest. On those, my team leans in as project managers to make sure results land – and are shared.
Powered by Prosus
What surprised me most is how hands-on Prosus is. I expected a traditional investor model; what I found is deeply operational – supporting teams, travelling, unblocking challenges and helping ideas move faster.
We work in six-month cycles with clear outcomes. If something isn’t working, you learn fast and change course - the jet-ski approach
That’s “Powered by Prosus”. Global scale with real autonomy. Clear destination, and you shape the how.
Looking ahead
Every day is different here. Priorities shift quickly, which suits me – I like change, and I learn something new from someone brilliant almost daily.
The long-term vision is a self-sustaining collaboration platform – an ecosystem where ideas and expertise move freely, and teams help each other without a central nudge.
Right now my focus is helping these communities grow into something permanent – a culture where collaboration is the default, not the exception. That’s what we mean by ecosystem: not a list of companies, but a network of people solving real problems together.
