We are a business thats growing rapidly. : So the day looks like start at four. But the food delivery or the telecom or the anything else that you start is again going to be brand new, with all kinds of new problems. And she basically created a team and went after the opportunity. You know, I was an EP at Mackenzie, but I didnt know what Mackenzies revenue was because is not something that the organization spoke about ever. We believe that the benefit of hyper-transparency is well worth the costs. Comparatively the first year of growth was slow for the company, but the next two years experienced a 30 percent growth per month. Versus what is it that someone on the ground has the autonomy to make their own choices. 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. 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 . : So quick question, why do you have to hit such high growth rates? And we started that exercise. So not much changed. Shikhar Ghosh: And this would have been your job. So growth was a big, you know, weekly growth rate. : So the ambition initially was actually not so big. A transcript appears after the video. Mudassir Sheikha: So some of these things like analytics, growth hacking, in general, the product is expanding to cover these things. So the way a manager behaves in Egypt or Pakistan might be completely different. They all knew it was going to be tough. And focusing on people is not just focus on individuals, but focus on the culture-. This is something that you as the CEO need to own. The movement of things as well. So at that point, we rolled down what we called a family contract. Because if you wow them, then they will wow your customers, right? Careem operates in more than 100 cities across 14 countries with more than 1,300 colleagues and well over one million captains on its platform. And she basically created a team and went after the opportunity. You know, just the norms. How do you transfer that, then? Is it wrong? So if you believe that your competitor is targeting these type of growth rates, then you cannot be targeting less than your main competitor. They start believing lives are due to some extent. And then you go home at? 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 they were suffering from not even getting proper sleep in the early days. And if you do it at the country level, then youre not going to get the agility that you need or the relevance that you need. : You know, this mountain, then the next mountain, the next mountain at the same pace, almost because your growth rate has continued at very high rates. Anything outside of it, we want it to be as local as possible. It was when it breaks, were going to fix the problem that broke. And now, of course, were many times that size now. What gets done in the country? Mudassir Sheikha: Experience is an interesting one, right? We were obsessed with weekly growth rate. [20][21][22] In October 2016, the company reached an agreement with regulators in Dubai whereby customers are able to book all taxicabs and limousines operating in Dubai via the Careem mobile app. Shikhar Ghosh: So what does that mean? The particular context that somebodys in. Shikhar Ghosh: So even if you create new businesses, if the operating system is robust enough, then it will morph into that. Saturday is my catch up day. : The first principle is driven by mission and values. : So what does that mean? I think some of these things are tested locally as well. How to work with our systems. This scholarship will allow LUMS to reward the high performing undergraduate scholars at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering (SBASSE), inspiring and nurturing a vision for . And then what was also happening in the early days is we had no customer service. The task and the challenge of getting that right was not as I was nave on that front. And the other times are available for meetings, review meetings and so forth. Shikhar Ghosh: So they are writing agreements with their families now? And if you were in a different industry, you might think about growth differently? You know, whats the completion rate of the trip? Shes the entrepreneur now, right? He grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, before graduating from the University of Southern California with a degree in economics and computer science . Shikhar Ghosh: And is it that growth itself, you know, so people like I think it was eBay, originally, that would change its system every day, every night and they would say, you know, so if Amazon is doing Amazon auctions, they would say Amazon works on a monthly cycle, which they think is great. : So well hopefully create these type of initiatives-. Have you actually started working less as a result of that? And then you have to come up the next play, right? You get a boarding pass. 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. And if Im not mistaken, there were once or twice flags were raised and things did not get much better. I get this question all the time from people-. [8] He is known for his philanthropic work in Pakistan, particularly in the areas of education and healthcare.[9]. Four of us sat down, Magnus, Sara, me, Saba, and we basically wrote down what we called the boundary conditions. Under Sheikha's leadership, Careem became one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the region, raising over $771 million in funding and reaching a . Ideally, youd designate some people that you believe are super-aligned with the values and these are the people that do this for It could be a few of them that do it for everyone so that theres some consistency thats applied to that process. [3] Careem expanded into the food delivery business with Careem Now in November 2018[4] and launched a digital payment platform, Careem Pay in April 2022. Thats when people really look and see. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah, its a good question. Startup founders whose companies were acquired by Careem will also gain considerable wealth with this acquisition. : So, yes. Basically these are starting routes for now. Or the systems that have to run, you know, like a railway thing. And now we had five different ways of running Careem because these five different leaders were not working in a consistent, coherent way. Shikhar Ghosh: You know, this mountain, then the next mountain, the next mountain at the same pace, almost because your growth rate has continued at very high rates. You could almost do any of the jobs yourself. Shikhar Ghosh: So if you were starting a company again, or youre advising somebody whos starting a company thats going through a similar ride in terms of the growth, what would you tell them to do? : Yeah. Al Thani started selling car parts in Doha at age 16. We signed it. You became the CEO of this company somewhat reluctantly in the sense that you had the founders and then you all got together and this was what? You know, all of that. 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. So these are the four things that well do to win. The company, which was valued at over US$2 billion in 2018, became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber after being acquired for $3.1 billion in January 2020. The next year it was why just the GCC? This transaction will be completed by the first quarter of 2020 and will be divided into $1.4 billion to be paid in cash and $1.7 billion in convertible notes into Uber stock. What are the things that surprised you about that transition from when you go to knowing everything thats happening and acting on each of the things that are blowing up, to knowing that Im not going to know a lot thats happening? 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 if some opportunity comes up in Riyadh, we will prioritize it above anything else in the world, right? So then you dont have to look at these numbers because everyones looking at these numbers. It requires a lot of, in deciding of the market, analytics. Empowering the front line to make the decisions to do as much as possible that they can do on their own. And youre always doing things in a hacked up way to buy yourself another few months, right? So you want them to behave differently if its a critical problem versus its not a critical problem, and so on. You understood the business completely. So these values, theyre somewhat universal, right? So we made some progress on it and if you think of our position, our strategic position vis a vis others in the industry, you know, we ar a local player that has to compete with someone that has more money. High-growth companies achieving a billion dollar valuation with their ability to defy the odds in the global south are rare, just like unicorns. So Wednesday, for example, is fully blocked for thinking. So thats when Magnus and I would have to be a lot more involved in the business. As one of the Middle East's unicorn startups, Careem made headlines in 2019 for its US$3.1 billion acquisition by Uber- but even that achievement didn't let it remain unscathed from the COVID-19 . They need to be rallied and they need to be encouraged and they need to be inspired. Meaning understanding local opportunities and adapting our product to meet those opportunities. Everyone says value is important. This thing will start attracting the right people. So the first two years we bought, and I think somewhere in the second or third year, and it coincided with me having twins and I think there was something happening in Magnuss life as well, where I think the wives forced a discussion on us. Drive experience for our captains and customers thats going to bring growth. And in the beginning, we were not able to hire a lot of senior people that would proactively see that things would not work and reinvent proactively. Shikhar Ghosh: So would it be possible to get us a weekly calendar? Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah, so we would have this joke in the office that, you know, lets only fix it for the next six months because anything beyond that would take a lot longer to fix, that we would not have the time for. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah. 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. Shikhar Ghosh: So you want to do the values in a particular way. : I think that the thing that was most surprising for me was around people and culture. So shes acquired a business, by the way, that was doing something similar to get a jump start. Shikhar Ghosh: So, you know, you started up the company. 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. But even at relatively high levels in that organization, you had no idea what a business was producing, right? : So product market fit is a constantly evolving thing because you have to be continuously better than someone else that has deeper pockets, that is able to give the same thing that you have, with some delay, at a cheaper price. And then you say, so what does that translate to what people have to do? WATCH LIVE. Not just on the day to day side, but then to make sure that these transitions were caught early enough or late, not too late, and then fixed. Sheikha gave himself the ambitious time period of just six weeks to roll out the first iteration of Careem and be in the market at the earliest. So analytics just as an example. It was when it breaks, were going to fix the problem that broke. 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? Why can it not be in the Middle East? So they are starting to become a part of the product. So thats what the definition of tough maybe was in the early days. There are review meetings that I do and now I actually block the times on my calendar to do thinking. And go to the office, you know, there are bunch of meetings depending on the day and depending on the time of the month. How much time is the captain spending, getting paid for a trip or is he waiting? Or a formal recruiting process? [3], In 2012, he left McKinsey & Company to form Careem with ex-McKinsey colleague, Magnus Olsson from Sweden. So would probably have an edge in how much they can invest in our markets and they might have better core technology than us. : Right. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah, and you know, since we are closer to the cities and closer to the markets that we operate in than competition, we are in most cases able to find local opportunities before them. So if you miss one or two days of growth, thats going to be very, very difficult to hit those growth rates because youre not going to be able to make up for that. : So when you reflect on that, you know, because this is going on and theres no end in sight because the ambition keeps growing, you might reach a point where the systems are in place for the transportation side of the business. And I think Abdulla earlier this year sat down with me and said, look, you cannot outsource values and Careem operating system to someone else. Then after that, we said why just, you know, passenger transport? And the third one is theres some things that the country or Dubai needs to control, right? How do you transfer that knowledge? So we have at least defined a principle around I and now were figuring out the KPIs that we should put behind it and then we start changing all the dashboards to focus organization on these KPIs. Search for: Search. 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. [17], In April 2021, Careem launched Careem Pay, a digital wallet for money transfers and withdrawals in the UAE. : 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. Mudassir Sheikha: So look at the Netflix deck, right, which most people respect. Mudassir Sheikha: So in the Careem operating system, one of the principles is invest in experience to get growth. [25] In October 2018, the company secured US$200 million funding from its existing investors. How do you balance these two things? We were providing a 24/7 transportation service. So it was difficult to get the caliber of people that we were hoping to get. 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. : So that part, in hindsight was we underestimated that challenge and we didnt invest enough in it. It will slow you down in the very, very beginning because it requires some thinking. Empowering the front line to make the decisions to do as much as possible that they can do on their own. But my thing was, look, I enjoy problem solving. Default is city, but guess what? This has to have your signature on it. Mudassir Sheikha: So this is not something that can be done right away or that can be outsourced. So they say theres seasonality and theres this and that, so I cant do monthly, even. : And that did not happen at the quality and the rigor that should have happened. They all knew it was going to be tough. In 2012, he left to form a new company with ex-McKinsey colleague, Magnus Olsson. Lets try to create some management layers that will create some sanity to it. Mudassir Sheikha: And it takes time, it takes thinking. Youre constantly thinking of whats happening in the business or Its actually even more frustrating for them because youre there, but youre not there. You know, we feel its okay to ping our databases every 15 minutes, thats fine. This is the culture that we want to build. Mudassir Sheikha: where I think the burden becomes higher is sort of to reinvent yourself. And then things would break again and wed buy another six months and then things would break again. Many of our customers will value it for long haul routes. There are review meetings that I do and now I actually block the times on my calendar to do thinking. We sent it to each other. And thats pretty much it. Nothing is impossible. Initially, 10 markets. But guess what happens? And then what you realize is one, this business is 24/7. Namedone of the "Best Entrepreneurs in the US," by Businessweek, Ghosh has led some most innovative tech-based companies in the US and advised hundreds of entrepreneurs. Shikhar Ghosh: Like the customer relationship. Or the systems that have to run, you know, like a railway thing. : So last topic that I want to go through is as youve grown, the issue of you know, what do you keep in the central place that you can learn from everybody? But the question is why minutes and not hours or days, right? We were a bit naive when it came to architecting how we work and the culture that we wanted. So thats something that weve done in the last-. So they can provide a service to a city. Careem is the first unicorn in the Middle East and a game-changer service for the region. Exactly. But some of these values are universal too, right? : And our answer is that we will win by being more local than them. I profile people and startups contributing to the Pakistani technology entrepreneurial ecosystem. Theres always something thats going right and wrong with different markets. The morning times, of course, are fully blocked for thinking. But then youre not going to be doing all the hiring. ", Leadership Coach & Educator, Fortune 500 Executive. The living conditions of these drivers were appalling. Mudassir Sheikha: And the second framework is if the function is not done at a city level, what role does the country or Dubai play for that activity, for that function. July 2012 Careem is launched by co-founders Mudassir Sheikha and Magnus Olsson September 2013 Careem secures funding of $1.7 million in a round led by STC Ventures So thats been a huge focus for me for the last six months. Celebrities Mudassar Sheikh Net Worth Mudassar Sheikh Net Worth 2023, Age, Height, Relationships, Married, Dating, Family, Wiki Biography We are a business thats growing rapidly. So not much changed. And the idea was that Magnus and I would hold each other accountable to what we were supposed to do. So people are working really, really hard. Finances is one part of it. We want to be the platform that enables internet commerce in this region. : I have been able to, except in the last few months when weve fundraising. : Theyre output oriented. In an interview with Al Arabiya, Careem CEO Mudassir Sheikha says the UAE-bred ride-hailing service will expand its latest fintech venture, digital payments. 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. Growth is an output. Even weekly is unusual, right? So shes acquired a business, by the way, that was doing something similar to get a jump start. We just had bigger hands and we were still able to manage. Mudassir Sheikha: So thats been a core challenge for the last year almost, for us. Many of our customers will value it for long haul routes. You go through that deck, you know, I think in literally half an hour, you get a very good sense of what this organization stands for. And we feel grateful that weve been able to attract these people to the journey. But my view in looking back at this is it would have saved us a lot more fires. And at some point, there were many people reporting to me and Magnus said, look, this is not sustainable. [16], In May 2019, Careem announced the acquisition of UAE-based bike-sharing startup Cycle which will re-brand as Careem Bike. : And the second framework is if the function is not done at a city level, what role does the country or Dubai play for that activity, for that function. Mudassir then joined the founding team of mobile testing and monitoring startup, DeviceAnywhere, where among other things, he . Did you have it or did your wives have it? We already captured that segment. And people get exhausted and they work really hard. The spectacular rise of the company resulted . : Yes, of course. The morning times, of course, are fully blocked for thinking. [10], In June 2017, Careem launched operations in Palestine as part of a commitment to create one million jobs in the MENA region by the end of 2018. Once we do this, we can actually start doing a lot more than passenger transport. Those things did not happen as well as they should have. Now, when we put that down we of course debated a lot internally. With the new acquisition deal worth $3.1 billion, $1.4 billion will be paid in cash and $1.7 billion will be in convertible notes into Uber stock. : The people processes, the structure. Exactly. In your case, its been constant. And you know, you worked at BCG and I spent some time at Mackenzie. The movement of things as well. Mudassir Sheikha: So this real-time nature of the real time transparency allowed us to catch any issues a lot faster and then react to them. It takes a lot of doing, you always have to be positive even when youre having a bad day. Should it be done in the city, should it be done in the country? Mudassir Sheikha: The first principle is driven by mission and values. You know, now is that something that you defer to the local, or is it something that you say, no, as a Careem, we have certain values that supersede anything thats local? : No, it was forced on us.
Sql Query To Calculate Distance Between Latitude Longitude,
Articles M