So growth was a big, you know, weekly growth rate. Now, when we put that down we of course debated a lot internally. Mudassir Sheikha is CEO/Co-Founder at Careem Networks FZ LLC. : So the ambition initially was actually not so big. 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. So at what point did you and Magnus sort of say, weve got to have some discussion with our families, think we should balance this out in some ways? [30] In 2019, the service expanded into Riyadh and Amman, and announced it was also launching in Pakistan. : But the contract was sort of written. What gets done in the country? : And on the captain side, similar KPIs. So just like the buses that we had in the subcontinent where you open a thing, it tells you this is the nearest bus station, go ahead walk to that bus station, the bus will be there at this time. And then we regressed. Meaning understanding local opportunities and adapting our product to meet those opportunities. You understood the business completely. [5], Careem was founded by Mudassir Sheikha, an American of Pakistani[6] origin and Magnus Olsson of Sweden, who had both worked as management consultants at McKinsey & Company. They all knew it was going to be tough. 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. Friday is a working day in many parts of the world, so Friday is when we do meetings with investors. And we started that exercise. 2020, The Year That Was: Mudassir Sheikha, Co-Founder - Entrepreneur Now, if you allow all the cities to do their own pricing, then youre probably going to leave, youre going to make mistakes because its very sophisticated. You have to be involved in the process, you have to steer the process, you have to ride the process. So thats when Magnus and I would have to be a lot more involved in the business. Mudassir Sheikha: When we raised our CVC, we actually promised ourselves that we will get away from that mindset, that were not going to keep patching things because that whole debt was starting to catch up to us. So scale is important. And get some early head start in this business. And the front line for us is the cities. And when you make the hard choice, you know, I can get more revenue by doing this, you know, heres this person who is our best salesperson, but hes a jerk to all the employees. Pivoting For Progress: Why Careem Turned To A 0% Commission Model For Its Food Delivery Business. Now youve got a sales force, theyre doing their thing. So then you dont have to be as proactively pushing for it because now I know that people are looking at these numbers, right? In fact, they were helping us-. You know, whats the completion rate of the trip? And then things would break again and wed buy another six months and then things would break again. Whats your sense of the trade off? He started his career with Trilogy Software before joining San Francisco-based mobile experience startup Brience at the height of the dot-com bubble in March 2000. Shikhar Ghosh: You know, why not 10% a month? Congratulations on Careem's First Decade. But obviously, changing from six countries to the whole Middle East has all kinds of implications on the organization, how you need to organize, who the people are, how big its going to be. Or the systems that have to run, you know, like a railway thing. ", Leadership Coach & Educator, Fortune 500 Executive. : Or weeks. But there was no sight of things getting better. That would have saved us a lot more time and effort down the road. Then we empower them to the right resources to do this and we support them and do this, right? So weve all been saying values are important. It would have saved us a lot more bad hiring decisions. View articles by Mudassir Sheikha. So we were giving people feedback. [9] In 2017, the company announced a program to extend maternity leave and hire more women. It will slow you down in the very, very beginning because it requires some thinking. And thats pretty much it. "From seeing a startup go belly up, Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha has come a long way", "CNBC Transcript: Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha Speaks with Hadley Gamble from the CNBC Evolve Global Summit", "Careem CEO says the Middle East is 'not very far' from seeing more billion-dollar start-ups", "Uber buys rival Careem in $3.1 billion deal to dominate ride-hailing in Middle East", "Dubai's Careem rides high after $3bn Uber buyout", "Meet The Unicorn That's Beating Uber In The Middle East", "Careem's Mudassir Sheikha on Co-Founders, Establishing Culture & Balancing Family at a Rapidly Scaling Startup", "Co-Founder Careem, Mudassir Sheikha Donates USD 2 Million to LUMS Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering | Welcome to LUMS", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mudassir_Sheikha&oldid=1150982003, This page was last edited on 21 April 2023, at 05:42. It was a very short time to build any kind of technology, and they skipped a lot of features and launched the service. So it was difficult to get the caliber of people that we were hoping to get. : So when we get a phone call and say hey, whats going in? Fiance, Age, Net W Who is Bernice Burgos? So if you believe that your competitor is targeting these type of growth rates, then you cannot be targeting less than your main competitor. So we tried that. Shikhar Ghosh: So what does that mean? [16], In May 2019, Careem announced the acquisition of UAE-based bike-sharing startup Cycle which will re-brand as Careem Bike. : Like the customer relationship. Youre constantly thinking of whats happening in the business or Its actually even more frustrating for them because youre there, but youre not there. And we are basically funding her and we are supporting her to make this thing happen. So these are people that are super capable that we trust. Drive experience for our captains and customers thats going to bring growth. Wed but another six months. 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? What gets done in the city? Mudassir Sheikha: Like the customer relationship. : You are serving people in different teams in different locations. Even people that werent hands-on in the beginning, after six months, theyre forced to be hands-on because thats the expectation the organization has because we started doing everything ourselves and thats how we built this. Shikhar Ghosh: Give me a sense of what tough means? LinkedIn Mudassir Sheikha . We already captured that segment. And if you miss one day of growth, then its going to be difficult to grow at 30, 40% monthly, which is sort of the targets that we had initially. And now we had five different ways of running Careem because these five different leaders were not working in a consistent, coherent way. Mudassir Sheikha - Author Biography | Entrepreneur 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. So basically what happens is lets say, you have this great product that customers love. Mudassir Sheikha: I hope thats happening. Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and co-founder of Careem. At that point, we were a bit speechless because we felt that things would get better in two years from when we started the business. In November 2015, Careem announced a Series C round investment of US$60 million led by The Abraaj Group. But some of these values are universal too, right? So that says that this is by far the most effective sort of way that you can do it. Prior to Careem, Mudassir was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients on strategy and business building. And the more I get into it, the more I realize that if you just get this right, then this thing will start running like a machine. Personally as well, but also reinvent the way that youre doing things. : And were going to fix it only enough until the next time it breaks. So you want them to behave differently if its a critical problem versus its not a critical problem, and so on. You know, hiring people, putting them out there, designing the part. And now we had five different ways of running Careem because these five different leaders were not working in a consistent, coherent way. An ever-expanding vision. This thing will start attracting the right people. We want to be the platform that enables internet commerce in this region. So if lets say, pricing as a topic. Mudassir Sheikha interviewed by Shikhar Ghosh, August 30, 2018, at Harvard Business School. Shikhar Ghosh: Right. Cairo has grown seven percent from last week. And initially, it was difficult to even get the right people, right? So we were giving people feedback. [41] And in the very beginning, even the people that were doing different things were sitting very close to us, so we knew everything that was happening. So, you know, as the CEO, what have you learned, what surprised you about being CEO of a really fast-growing company? And the last is take ownership of Careem. And then we regressed. Comparatively the first year of growth was slow for the company, but the next two years experienced a 30 percent growth per month. You know, pricing is a pretty complicated, sophisticated topic that has far reaching implications if its not done right. In a conversation with Shikhar Ghosh, Sheikha reflects on leadership lessons he learned while rapidly scaling. And what is it that the local market has to adapt for its own thing? The entire company is looking at these numbers. 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. Very early, Careem recognized the need for providing two different types of customer service. So this is something that we didnt pay enough attention to at the beginning, that in hindsight we would pay more attention to. Shikhar Ghosh: But you didnt even have a performance management process, right? Im going to give a promo code that gives people 50% off for the next 10 trips. : It had some validity, it had some relevance. So slowly your matrix has sort of been built out and you can judge very quickly whether somebodys in the range or not. : So this real-time nature of the real time transparency allowed us to catch any issues a lot faster and then react to them. : But the question is how do you transfer that skill? So that says that this is by far the most effective sort of way that you can do it. Its Karachi should do something, Lahore should do something and the people that are running those cities need to be empowered to do those things. So youre basically not there when theyre awake. Thats the default one. We came from a culture that was giving very regular feedback in the consulting days. Mudassir Sheikha: Absolutely, right? Not, you know, head of HR or not people person. And this was an initiative that was started by her. Qatari Sheikh Jassim just bid $7.5b for a soccer team. So to the moon and beyond, be of service. With over one million captains spanning across 100+ cities, Careem embraced the diversity of different cultures to build for scale. Both ride-hailing companies will operate their respective regional services and independent brands. Thats when people really look and see. Shikhar Ghosh: But the way it manifests might be different in each of those cases. He added: "Going Remote-First is deeply aligned with our values of ownership and trust which drove this strategic decision. Careem received seed money of US$1.7 million in a round led by STC Ventures in 2013. Shikhar Ghosh: But the question is how do you transfer that skill? And Ive actually made a note of it and I tell myself this every day to remind myself that look, I need to now focus on people that will drive the business. And so youre going to go through similar cycles of growth. 200 of these employees will become Dirham millionaires, whereas almost 75 will become dollar millionaires for their shares reports The National. The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship is the champion for entrepreneurship education and training for Harvard Business School. And then what was also happening in the early days is we had no customer service. : So, you know, you started up the company. You go in, you show the boarding pass, youre in. And then you started looking at examples of things that happened before and then you start building conviction, right? So the way a manager behaves in Egypt or Pakistan might be completely different. So if your competition is a lot bigger than you, then . And go to the office, you know, there are bunch of meetings depending on the day and depending on the time of the month. And now youre coming full circle and going back to saying once you see all the linkages, then you can reliably focus on this side because you know that its going to carry through.
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