And if you were in a different industry, you might think about growth differently? Personally as well, but also reinvent the way that youre doing things. We want to be the platform that enables internet commerce in this region. And if Im not mistaken, there were once or twice flags were raised and things did not get much better. Mudassir Sheikha: Now, on the family front, I think it was the first couple of years we had set expectations with our wives, that its going to be very, very tough for the first two years. Its not a subjective thing. Mudassir Sheikha and his colleague Magnus Olsson left McKinsey in 2012 to start Careem with the mission to simplify and improve the lives of people in the Middle East. We just had bigger hands and we were still able to manage. Shikhar Ghosh: 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. Drive experience for our captains and customers thats going to bring growth. So how will we win against someone like that? Like off the record, I can say the number, but I think it was quite a bit, almost twenty exact number, right? In fact, they were helping us-. And on the customer side, for example, experience is a function of, you know, when you open the app, is a car available? 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. So that, you just trained the organization to be on it. We sent it to each other. So, you know, in this first part of the journey, say up to CVC or so, you were hands-on on everything. And people get exhausted and they work really hard. Women were legally allowed to start driving on 24 June 2018, and Uber and Careem women drivers were able to start working on the same day. : And were going to fix it only enough until the next time it breaks. That vision keeps getting communicated to everyone that is at Careem, joins Careem. And please figure out the HR side of it, right? Well win by having much better people and by having a culture that drives a certain mission and vision type of behavior. You know, we feel its okay to ping our databases every 15 minutes, thats fine. So how do you deal with that? Like, okay, yes, if we had done something differently back then, then this would have actually saved us a lot more time. 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 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. We signed it. Theres questions that you ask and then, you know, based on the responses that you get, you can get a feel for it, right? Do you think this acquisition will positively affect Careems operations in Pakistan? : Yeah, because one thing you have to realize is there are some net worth effects in this business. : So, you know, all of that is driven by the external world, right? Mudassir Sheikha is one of the globally recognized startup founders after launching of Careem in March 2012. Mudassir Sheikha - Wikipedia If its a necessary part of it, but its the customer service, its the on time, you know, its all of those things. And we started that exercise. How do you transfer that knowledge? So these are experience KPIs that we look at that tell us what retention rates will be for customers on some longer term basis. It will slow you down in the very, very beginning because it requires some thinking. 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. This thing will start driving and incentivizing people the right way. Those are also very respectable growth rates. But generally, Friday Ive been able to block. So we would only patch things and buy us six months. 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 youre coming at midnight. Even weekly is unusual, right? These are the values that we stand for. This is something that you as the CEO need to own. Shikhar Ghosh: Also the size of the fall is much bigger. For the next 10 years, he set a goal for building an institution from the region that delivers great products and creates a positive impact on the regional population. And youre always doing things in a hacked up way to buy yourself another few months, right? 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 they can provide a service to a city. So if some opportunity comes up in Riyadh, we will prioritize it above anything else in the world, right? 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. Did you think about that? Mudassir Sheikha LinkedIn. So not much changed. Shikhar Ghosh: And this all analytical in the sense that you could just look at the numbers. 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. Legal, regulatory thing? Its an output of you doing all the right things, right? Have you actually started working less as a result of that? When Sheikha and Olsson decided to build a solution for this often ignored segment of the population, their business found a purpose. Do you have a demand issue, do you have a supply issue? [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. But the path to becoming a unicorn wasnt straightforward or easy. : where I think the burden becomes higher is sort of to reinvent yourself. And then you go home at? [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. Both on the captain side and the customer side. I think one is weve been able to build a leadership team thats a lot more capable than what we had ever before. We just had bigger hands and we were still able to manage. Careem: It's Full Speed Ahead For This Middle East Startup Mudassir Sheikha - UAE So thats the way we are approaching those things which require more scientific planning, thinking, and doing. You know, pricing is a pretty complicated, sophisticated topic that has far reaching implications if its not done right. And make that real. So after CVC, we said lets start-. So this is something that we didnt pay enough attention to at the beginning, that in hindsight we would pay more attention to. 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 its this thing of saying what are the central functions that you want everyone to do more or less the same way or following the same principles? Shikhar Ghosh, Marilyn Morgan Westner, Mudassir Sheikha and Matt Fischer. [7] It started operating in July 2012 as a website-based service for corporate car bookings, and evolved to become a ridesharing company with car hire for everyday use. Insights for Scaling Startups from Serial Entrepreneur Lara OConnor Hodgson, Sunil Nagaraj on the Mindsets of Entrepreneurs & Investors. [25] In October 2018, the company secured US$200 million funding from its existing investors. : So if you compared that vision to any existing company, whos the closest analog? Mudassir Sheikha: Absolutely, right? So thats been a huge focus for me for the last six months. Im going to give a promo code that gives people 50% off for the next 10 trips. : The biggest learning and the biggest surprise has been around people leadership, right? How do you balance the tax that you place on yourself and therefore on your family, therefore on other choices that youre making. Why such high growth rates? He added: "Going Remote-First is deeply aligned with our values of ownership and trust which drove this strategic decision. Shikhar Ghosh: Because the context is so important, right? : 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? Youre constantly thinking of whats happening in the business or Its actually even more frustrating for them because youre there, but youre not there. So growth was a big, you know, weekly growth rate. From that came Careem. So shes acquired a business, by the way, that was doing something similar to get a jump start. Certain aspects of the brand are part of it, but for the most part, we want to empower the front line and have them drive the decisions and only support them as an advisor versus become service providers or controllers. But to sort of get it in that shape probably took a lot of time and a lot of thinking and a lot of iteration, right? Careem is a Dubai-based super app with operations in over 100 cities, covering 12 countries across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia regions. So if you look at the first business plan that we presented to investors, we basically said we will be, I think it was 50 million dollars in revenue by 2017. If theres a super compelling reason for this thing to be done at the country level, then well do it at the country level otherwise well keep it at the city level. Shikhar Ghosh: Two years ago. : So the day looks like start at four. Now, of course, it could be cause and effect but when weve invested in people and getting people excited, weve actually seen growth happen I those markets. [17], In April 2021, Careem launched Careem Pay, a digital wallet for money transfers and withdrawals in the UAE. Everyone says value is important. So they say, you know, you can focus on profitability like you focus on jet You need it in order to keep the business and so on. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah. So these are the four things that well do to win. LinkedIn Mudassir Sheikha . In 2012, he left to form a new company with ex-McKinsey colleague, Magnus Olsson. They start believing lives are due to some extent. And if Im not mistaken, there were once or twice flags were raised and things did not get much better. Okay, this is what I want, now do it. In a conversation with Shikhar Ghosh, Sheikha reflects on leadership lessons he learned while rapidly scaling. 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. But to sort of get it in that shape probably took a lot of time and a lot of thinking and a lot of iteration, right? That would have saved us a lot more time and effort down the road. This has to have your signature on it. So you want them to behave differently if its a critical problem versus its not a critical problem, and so on. So you always have to, so this is what we keep telling ourselves, we have to always be better than competition. Whats your sense of the trade off? Mudassir Sheikha - Co-Founder and CEO @ Careem - CrunchBase : Right. If youre running a business of hundreds of millions of dollars, a mistake is many millions. But thats not what generates anything. Mudassir Sheikha is the co-founder and CEO of Careem, MENAs leading car booking service that is based out of Dubai and operates from Morocco to Pakistan. You could drive growth differently and probably the healthier way if you target lesser, lower growth rates because then you can focus on the right things, which might take a little bit longer to put in place, but theyll bring healthy growth. Head Of Information Security at MacPaw Inc. We'll be in your inbox every morning Monday-Saturday with all the days top business news, inspiring stories, best advice and exclusive reporting from Entrepreneur. Shikhar Ghosh: And this would have been your job. Or do you think, like, well figure that out? But even at relatively high levels in that organization, you had no idea what a business was producing, right? Even a manager who follows the basic good principles that you have, these behave differently because thats the way organizations are. Mudassir Sheikha: Yeah. You did something inspirational. Like ambition. Mudassir Sheikha - | This was a five-year business plan that was prepared in 2012. I know the Middle East very well having worked for Dubai headquartered The Entertainer (who are 50% owned by The Abraaj Group) I spent a year based at Abraaj's London HQ in Mayfair when I founded the UK business and I travelled reguarly to Dubai and the Middle East during the two and a bit years I was with the company. So thats when Magnus and I would have to be a lot more involved in the business. Here's how Mudassir Sheikha built Careem into a unicorn - Tech in Asia Or a formal recruiting process? So it was very incremental and as it fired up, we solved it. It takes a lot of doing, you always have to be positive even when youre having a bad day. 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? She assembled a team, asked us to fund this thing. : Yeah. Mudassir Sheikha: So one opportunity for example, one of our early, early colleagues, she realized that bus, Careem bus was an opportunity. So Saturday I catch up on things that have to be done that I didnt get a chance to do during the week, so Fridays off. : So what does your day look like? So amazing experiences. 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. Mudassir Sheikha: Its an investment for sure, right? But rapid growth created internal strain. Mudassir Sheikha: One is like, look, youre not at home much, so youre leaving at six a.m. sometimes, many times. Is it right? Keep improving and stay humble. Those things did not happen as well as they should have. : The three pillars are shoot for the moon and beyond. Even when youre there, youre not present. And then what you realize is one, this business is 24/7.