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Marina Ilina
CEO & Founder of RedCore
An entrepreneur and founder of international business group RedCore, bringing together seven brands across iGaming, Fintech, RegTech, and MarTech. In 2016, Marina Ilina founded the company from scratch and today serves as its CEO.
Marina Ilina has been in business for more than 10 years.
She began her career in 2012 as a Product and Operations Manager in IT companies, and later worked in consulting for technology businesses. Her move into iGaming was a conscious choice: the industry attracted her with its speed, intensity, and complexity of tasks.
In 2016, she founded a company that grew into the PIN-UP Global ecosystem and later transformed into the RedCore business group. Where others saw iGaming as a final destination, Marina saw a springboard — an opportunity to build expertise and technologies that could later be scaled across other industries.
“A successful business is a combination of strong expertise, adaptive technologies, and a high speed of implementation.“
A separate area of her work is regulatory technology. Marina advises the governments of several countries on iGaming regulation and acts as a mediator between the industry and government institutions.
In 2025, she completed the large-scale transformation of PIN-UP Global into RedCore — an international business group with a diversified portfolio and a decentralized management model, where each brand operates as an independent business with its own strategy, team, and P&L responsibility.
RedCore is an international business group developing and implementing innovative solutions for digital markets and bringing together 5,000 specialists who work with its brands.
Leveraging expertise and technologies across key areas of the digital economy, RedCore creates products and services that transform digital processes, strengthen business potential, and unlock new growth opportunities across the following industries:
Frogo
All-in-one fraud prevention platform built to protect high-risk digital businesses. It combines advanced tools such as device fingerprinting, a custom scoring engine, an AI module and graph-based forensics.
Pay.Partners
Platform for media buyers and webmasters that brings together virtual cards, crypto processing and agency accounts in a single interface. It enables users to manage budgets in a single, seamless system.
CommsHub
Unified platform for messaging and notifications. Smart cascading ensures seamless, uninterrupted delivery across SMS, messengers, and flash calls, while real-time cost control simplifies communication management.
mr.Booster
Full-cycle marketing agency and AdTech provider combining media buying, SEO and production with proprietary tools: a real-time statistics dashboard, Retarg DSP Platform, pixel and analytics system — all built for business growth.
PIN-UP Partners
Direct iGaming advertiser and affiliate program with its own product and 10 years of market experience. Partners get access to selected GEOs, detailed analytics, a predictive model, and in-house expertise to launch and scale traffic.
Riddick's Partners
Multi-vertical affiliate network with exclusive offers, operating across 10+ key GEOs in Tier 1–3, bringing together the best webmasters and advertisers to build effective solutions for acquiring quality traffic.
- Strategic Management
Built a decentralized management model for the business group, with each brand operating with its own strategy, team, and P&L responsibility.
- Business Transformation
Initiated and led the transformation of the iGaming holding company PIN-UP Global into RedCore, a diversified technology business group with brands serving digital industries.
- RegTech Expertise
Advises governments in several countries on iGaming regulation. Acts as a mediator between the industry and regulators, helping develop regulatory frameworks where businesses and governments work in the interests of the market and its users.
- Scaling
Over 10 years, scaled the company into an international business group with 5,000 specialists, offices worldwide, and seven brands operating across the CIS, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
- Investments
Develops RedCore’s investment branch: funding, operational support, and smart
- International Expansion
Built deep operational expertise in iGaming and uses it as a competitive advantage when expanding the group’s
General
5,000 specialists
Founded the company in 2016 and scaled it into an international business group with 5,000 specialists.
PIN-UP Global
more than 30 industry awards, including “Best Employer of the Year” according to SIGMA in 2023 and 2024.
RedCore
Transformation of the Year, SiGMA Rome.
Personal
Leader of the Year
SBC Summit Barcelona.
CEO of the Year
SiGMA Eurasia.
20 Women in Tech
Forbes Cyprus.
The 140+ Most Powerful Women in Business
Cyprus.
Your questions, answered
- 01/06Who is Marina Ilina?
CEO and Founder of RedCore, an international business group headquartered in Cyprus. She founded the company in 2016 and scaled it to 5,000 specialists working with the business group’s brands worldwide. She has received the Leader of the Year award (SBC Summit Barcelona) and CEO of the Year (SiGMA Eurasia), and has been included in the Forbes Cyprus 20 Women in Tech and 140+ Most Powerful Women in Business lists by IMH.
- 02/06What is RedCore, and what was Marina’s role in its creation?
RedCore is an international business group bringing together seven brands: Frogo, Pay.Partners, CommsHub, PIN-UP Partners, Riddick's Partners, and mr.Booster. Marina initiated and personally led the transformation of the PIN-UP Global iGaming holding into a diversified group with products for Fintech, RegTech, MarTech, and E-commerce. In 2025, RedCore received the Transformation of the Year award at SiGMA Rome.
- 03/06What is unique about Marina Ilina’s management approach?
Marina has built a decentralized model in which each RedCore brand operates as an autonomous business with its own strategy, team, and P&L responsibility. At the same time, the business group centralizes service functions — legal, financial, HR, and R&D support — so that brands can focus on growth. The result: 60% of top managers have been developed internally, while 67% of employees are willing to recommend RedCore as an employer, compared to a market average of 30%.
- 04/06What is Marina Ilina’s role in iGaming regulation?
Marina Ilina is one of the few industry practitioners who directly advises governments on iGaming regulation. She believes that effective regulation is only possible through dialogue between the government and the market and acts as a mediator between regulators and the industry. RedCore is developing a separate RegTech direction, offering tools for transparent and competitive regulation of digital markets.
- 05/06What is Marina Ilina’s entrepreneurial philosophy?
“Successful business is a combination of strong expertise, adaptive technologies, and a high speed of implementation.” Marina Ilina believes that the tools developed in iGaming are among the most technologically mature due to high workloads and constant pressure for innovation. Her mission is to transfer this expertise to the broader digital economy and help other businesses scale faster.
- 06/06What markets and industries are within RedCore’s area of focus?
The RedCore business group is actively developing across the CIS, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Its brands and product portfolio cover iGaming, fintech, martech, adtech, regulatory technologies, e-commerce, and customer service. RedCore’s investment arm focuses on projects in iGaming, AI/ML, RegTech, and MarTech/Traffic.