The Amrop Digital Interviews: Oscar García-Velasco, Amrop Spain

Q: Can you talk briefly about your experience in the technology industry? Do you also have a technical educational background?

A: I come from technology industry, but I’m not technically a tech person (laughs). I used to code a bit as a hobby, to relax myself when I was stressed, but that’s not really something I ever did as work – I’ve always worked in the executive side of the technology business, in software business in particular.

Q: And you’ve lived and worked in nine countries.

A: Yes, in very different regions, so perhaps one of the assets that’s given me is a reasonably global worldview and a clear understanding of regional and cultural differences. My aim, when it comes to Amrop, was to bring in that experience and help organizations create a diverse culture and to really be able to identify talents in a multicultural environment. But back in 2000 I started working for large PE firms and developed career in M&A. I’ve worked on consolidating markets, like the ERP market, because, as industries mature, it’s cheaper to buy a customer, rather than to get a new customer! So, when you reach that level of maturity, it’s the right time to start executing a M&A strategy from an investment standpoint.

Q: That’s when you also started investing in AI-related projects – very early on, it seems.

A: Yes, that’s been an important topic for me for many years already. I had a boutique investment fund and one of the investments was related to AI for consumers in retail – it meant moving from data mining to really applying intelligence on the data, and that we eventually expanded to other companies. As I said, I’m not a “techie” - I’m not someone who could develop an algorithm, although I can understand it, but it’s not really my goal. My goals were always on the business side of things.

Q: And you’re an economist by degree.

A: Yes. I started my career in finance – one of the companies I worked for was IBM; executive and operations roles followed, then being a CEO of companies. So, overall, when it comes to technology, I have a pretty good understanding of the business and KPIs, and that’s also what I’m trying to bring to my work at Amrop.

Q: How did you start working for Amrop?

A: I used to live in Singapore – from early 2000s to 2020, which is when I moved back to Madrid. That’s when I was contacted by Federico Cuneo, who is Partner and Director of Amrop Perú, Panamá and Brazil, who invited me to join, saying that it might be a good opportunity for me at this time of my life and career. And I understood that somehow, I had been doing the same thing all the time, because when you acquire a company, you start looking for people, or people you already know start calling you and asking if there might be an opportunity for them, and at the end of the day it’s all about talent. For example, when you do M&A, there’s a substantial part of the process which is financially driven, and to make those financial goals a reality, you need talent – you need good people to run those things. And that was what convinced me that Amrop is the right place for me. Other than that, I believe that Amrop can become a key player in introducing changes in the technology business field, and that’s what we’re already working on here in Spain – for example, both raise awareness of the AI-related positions in the market and also us AI tools for our internal processes.

Q: How are you using AI currently?

AI in itself is not an objective – it is a means, and I believe that by the end of the year we will already reach a point where we can prove that it is substantially applicable for the purposes of our organization too. We are doing several things – one is about doing the initial stage of sourcing potential candidates more intelligently. It means scraping databases with some intelligence behind it, and also scraping news in the market in order to extrapolate when a company might potentially require a candidate even before the company itself knows it. We feel that it might also be possible to develop a sufficiently good way to create a match between a candidate a position – by no means it would replace the work of our people, but we can substantially facilitate it and create an opportunity for them to focus more on the more intelligent functions of search. Generative AI can facilitate also many other time-consuming functions, and that’s our aim in Spain and, of course, we would happily expand it across Amrop offices globally, which makes sense because AI is all about size and scope.

Q: What, to you, are the central benefits of becoming a member of Amrop’s Global Digital Practice?

A: I’m very excited to be part of the Digital Practice! For me it is a privilege to be working and interacting with peers in the digital space – it is an enrichment personal and professionally and I’m very much looking forward to working together around the AI-related topics. AI will create a large number of new positions in the technology industry, so sharing ideas and working on them together in the Digital Practice is going to be one of the best things to focus right now.

To find out more about Amrop’s technology and digital knowledge, methods and tools, please contact Oscar García-Velasco or the Amrop Digital Practice members in your country!