But even at relatively high levels in that organization, you had no idea what a business was producing, right? So they can provide a service to a city. I need to get responses in this time, Im going to pay this much money. Can we help you with anything? : Some of the people processes is another part of it. : It had some validity, it had some relevance. So it was very incremental and as it fired up, we solved it. Two years ago, yeah. So we have these three value pillars and there are 12 values. And then you go home at? Mudassir Sheikha: So, I think there is some Thats a great question. But my view in looking back at this is it would have saved us a lot more fires. And then things would break again and wed buy another six months and then things would break again. They need to be rallied and they need to be encouraged and they need to be inspired. And the default role is an advisory role. So we would only patch things and buy us six months. Careem has been competent from the day it rolled out its MVP. You know, we feel its okay to ping our databases every 15 minutes, thats fine. In a conversation with Shikhar Ghosh, Sheikha reflects on leadership lessons he learned while rapidly scaling. Shikhar Ghosh: But at the same time, you know, youve got 24 hours in the day. Shikhar Ghosh: And the competitions telling themselves the same thing, so its this constant movement. So you always have to, so this is what we keep telling ourselves, we have to always be better than competition. : Because the context is so important, right? High-growth companies achieving a billion dollar valuation with their ability to defy the odds in the global south are rare, just like unicorns. They feel aligned and driven to make it happen. Then, do I get rid of this person? And over time, I think just by bandwidth limitations, I had to sort of step back and let people drive a lot of the local business. Youve got sort of 18 working hours in a day and you have to do the practical things. During its first two years, to compete against Uber, Careem grew at an unprecedented rate of 30% per month. Why can it not be in the Middle East? Lets try to create some management layers that will create some sanity to it. [43][44][45][46], In January, 2018, Careem discovered data on more than 14 million riders and 558,800 drivers were breached. Because there are a lot of things that are in your head that you believe in and its not even easy to articulate them and give them to someone. So how will we win against someone like that? It will slow you down in the very, very beginning because it requires some thinking. Mudassir Sheikha: Its an investment for sure, right? [33], In Pakistan, Careem employs women drivers. Maybe this thing that were doing will not even materialize. Like many things that we should have done differently, whether it is in financial processes, or the technology side, they were starting to leave a lot of skeletons that we were then having to go back and fix. Because a lot of times what happens is some strategies or things that work for us today and give us growth today will not be the things thatll give us growth six months from now because weve sort of played those things out. We already captured that segment. : And the second thing which has happened, and you know, we had a conversation six months ago where I think you said something very interesting. Shikhar Ghosh, Marilyn Morgan Westner, Mudassir Sheikha and Matt Fischer. You have to be involved in the process, you have to steer the process, you have to ride the process. Give feedback to our colleagues to keep growing them, and to drive progress in our communities. Thats the default one. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah. The exponential growth of Careem roots from the values the company has instilled in its operations. They start believing lives are due to some extent. Legal, regulatory thing? Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah, because one thing you have to realize is there are some net worth effects in this business. Mudassir Sheikha LinkedIn. It would have made us, you know, correct a lot of the hiring decisions. And what have you learned about that? And the last is take ownership of Careem. What were the things that surprised you that as you grew, you know, what were the things that you came in and said, well, this is sort of different from what it was, what I was thinking it might be? So after CVC, we said lets start-. And who knows what happens in six months? and South Asia. We created some values and we just left it there. : So the ambition initially was actually not so big. And once this is in place, then we will be able to take a step back and make sure that we keep evolving this thing, versus evolve the business that this thing produces. So we started that exercise, but we didnt complete it. Shes the entrepreneur now, right? We signed it. Shikhar Ghosh: And this would have been your job. We came from a culture that was giving very regular feedback in the consulting days. You have to keep finding the next thing thats going to give you a differentiated product, a better product that will command a slight premium on prices because we arent able to be cheaper than them. "Sure you can open a retail store, but it's going to be difficult to make it into a large business - a billion-dollar . The numbers dont change immediately. [25] In October 2018, the company secured US$200 million funding from its existing investors. So amazing experiences. When [inaudible] was picking up a call and speaking to a customer, I could overhear [inaudible] because he was sitting next to me. Did you have it or did your wives have it? Building upon his experience of working in a Silicon Valley early-stage VC fund, and a mobile testing startup that was acquired by $60 million, he started his mission to develop something meaningful after leaving a secure career at McKinsey. You have to make sure that the questions youre asking are the questions that get asked by the person that is testing for that value fit. Mudassir Sheikha: And that did not happen at the quality and the rigor that should have happened. I just got on the phone with her early today and shes saying theres another small team that is doing something similar that she would just like to get on board full time. So they are starting to become a part of the product. This thing will start creating incentives for people to take risks. : And thats where those transition points were the ones that made the thing taxing, right? So it takes them longer to prioritize. : So what does your day look like? The entire company is looking at these numbers. But for the most part, the thing that changed is instead of managing and doing things directly, we started becoming a lot more KPI- focused and when there were big deviations on the KPIs, then we got super, super involved. Turned out they were just false assumptions of the market. Regulators are typically national. You know, whats the completion rate of the trip? : So one opportunity for example, one of our early, early colleagues, she realized that bus, Careem bus was an opportunity. : And the KPIs were mostly output-oriented? Its an output of you doing all the right things, right? : One is like, look, youre not at home much, so youre leaving at six a.m. sometimes, many times. In a good month, we were simplifying the lives of four to five million people . These are the behaviors that we want, this is how we add this to our recruiting process, this how well add this to our performance measurement process. And then you say, so what does that translate to what people have to do? So that person can translate and say look, hes ambitious. So basically what happens is lets say, you have this great product that customers love. And then people start adjusting to the new reality. Even when youre there, youre not present. And if theres a super crazy important reason to do it at the other level, well do it the other way. You know, pricing is a pretty complicated, sophisticated topic that has far reaching implications if its not done right. So we were giving people feedback. Al Thani started selling car parts in Doha at age 16. Two hundred employees will become dirham millionaires and about 75 will become dollar millionaires. And then our families could raise the flag as well and say you guys are not abiding to the contract that you signed with us. Startup founders whose companies were acquired by Careem will also gain considerable wealth with this acquisition. And you have the features that they want, the payment methods that they want, the interfaces that they want. Once we do this, we can actually start doing a lot more than passenger transport. Youve got sort of 18 working hours in a day and you have to do the practical things. So growth was a big, you know, weekly growth rate. : The first principle is driven by mission and values. So theres a high correlation between people, motivation. Mudassir Sheikha: When you start thinking of this a bit more, the more you think of these things and the more that you discuss these things, you start building more conviction behind them as well. What does it mean? : So if you compared that vision to any existing company, whos the closest analog? Mudassir Sheikha: So there was definitely a transition from doing everything to then having people who were doing things. Mudassir Sheikha is an American Pakistani business executive and co-founder and current CEO of the Middle Eastern and North African ride-sharing app company Careem that is . : I think the big turning point was when we started going to new markets, which is when we started having people that were running different cities that were away from us. And this was an initiative that was started by her. A committee was organized by the Egyptian government to assess the complaints of the protesting taxi drivers and standardize taxi services in Egypt. So lets say some city needs to grow 30% a month, which means seven percent week on week and theyre only growing three percent week on week when I look at the screen, then theres clearly an issue, right? So it was difficult to get the caliber of people that we were hoping to get. The equation was to strike a balance between increasing the respect and dignity for drivers and providing a good service for customers. Careem has not only tailored the service for its end users but also identified the unique challenges associated with the labour pool that is mostly immigrants in the Middle East and localized solutions for them. : So that part, in hindsight was we underestimated that challenge and we didnt invest enough in it. [40] And what is it that the local market has to adapt for its own thing? Is it right? We want to be the platform that enables internet commerce in this region. : So should pricing be done at the city level with some advisory support from the country? How do you think about that challenge? They know what theyre doing and they are extremely driven and in line with the mission and vision of Careem. Because as we have said multiple times, smart and very capable people, they dont want to work at startups. What ETA do you get? Shikhar Ghosh: So at what point, you know, we hear many companies go through two years of growth, right? So that, you just trained the organization to be on it. Mudassir says that when the offer came up, he and Magnus looked to their original purpose for guidance. She assembled a team, asked us to fund this thing. So these are people that are super capable that we trust. Mudassir Sheikha: So well hopefully create these type of initiatives-. Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and co-founder of Careem. : You know, why not 10% a month? So we were very hands-on and theres a culture of being hands-on at Careem. And Ill see the growth, but as soon as that promo code is over, the growth will vanish, right? So its just the real time nature of the business and the realizing that we have to hit high growth rates and reacting faster if somethings not right. Both companies apps will also continue to operate under separate brands. Mudassir Sheikha: And on the captain side, similar KPIs. The living conditions of these drivers were appalling. We didnt take it to the extension where it should have gone. So we tell people now, dont drive growth. And basically what that meant was every leader that came in started running their units in ways that made sense to them, based on what they had done prior. It was when it breaks, were going to fix the problem that broke. Mudassir Sheikha interviewed by Shikhar Ghosh, August 30, 2018, at Harvard Business School. I would like to do this. So we have these three value pillars and there are 12 values. There was probably one or two days that I was supposed to be a home where I could actually meet her before she goes to bed. We work on a daily cycle, so we improve 30 times as much, you know, within that same period of time. Required fields are marked *. Thats a very unusual thing. ", "Careem acquires Saudi-based home delivery service Enwani", "Dubai's Careem to extend maternity leave, hire more women", "Dubai's Careem says to launch operations in Palestine", "Where does Careem operate? And now we had five different ways of running Careem because these five different leaders were not working in a consistent, coherent way. And the default role is an advisory role. : And this all analytical in the sense that you could just look at the numbers. This page is not available in other languages. Despite the myriad hurdles which arose at different geographic locations, Sheikha established a company-wide culture that helped Careem thrive during the chaos of meteoric growth. Unlike various impact focused companies that focus on the end user, Careem started with its employees. Qatar. Mudassir Sheikha: Building a structure. Lets try to create some management layers that will create some sanity to it.

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