Airlift Retail Ops - A team of trailblazers

In June, after having gone through a very testing phase of letting go of 30% of the my management and operations team at Airlift's Retail function, I did not foresee that I would have to pass through an even tougher stage of letting the entire team go in just two months. The time after the initial scale-down has been incredibly tough since a lot of the retained team mates had to take on the weight of the let-go peers. However, the entire team rose up to the challenge, operated on a 10x level and made the operations stable to ensure the end customer experience does not take a hit. While the end is unfortunate, I'm very hopeful of the opportunities that awaits this team and the impact that is right around the corner with this incredibly talented team in the market.

Sharing more on individual roles and team-mates that I have worked with for the last 14 months especially for potential recruiters to find the right talent:

Store Operators: The on-ground front liners on which the Airlift brand was built. Lightening fast operators who know how to max out their efficiency to process an order under 10 minutes while ensuring every item is packed well and fresh for the customer. We have 164 such team mates in Lahore, 198 in Karachi and 124 in Islamabad. Their numbers, cities and CNICs are mentioned in this public sheet attached.

Live Operations Leads: (copied from the last blog post): Each shift at our dark store is managed by a single LiveOps Lead, who is looking after 15-20 store operators at a time. They own KPIs for a dark store to ensure timely processing and minimal complaint rates for delivering a great customer experience. LiveOps Leads are skilled at on-ground troubleshooting and problem solving. No matter the magnitude of order surges, they?put a structure to the chaos and mobilise large teams of store operators to minimise breakages. A list of 91 LiveOps Leads and their email addresses is attached in this sheet.

Product Operations Deployment / Sheheryar Ahmed: There have been very few interviews in which I have been a strong yes on a candidate. In Sheheryar's case, all 3 panelists were a strong yes and the debrief was more around how to get him as early as possible. Operations Deployment stood at the bridge between product and operations. It was really up to this function to ensure operations took the right and full benefit of any product feature that came out. Sheheryar was always a step ahead to ensure that not only were the product features utilized well, but also look for administrative controls where the product team took time to come up with an improvement. Being Sheheryar, he didn't just stop there but rather took upon himself to support operations by taking on the manual and administrative tasks in the absence of a product feature. In my time with Sheheryar, I have been thoroughly impressed by his work ethic, eagerness to learn and humility. With these traits, I know for a fact that he will go on to do great in his next role.

Retail Operations Managers:

Our managers were mainly divided in 3 roles:

1. Dark Store Manager / District Manager: The Dark Store Manager’s role required a lot of fire fighting, solving multiple ad-hoc issues and then overcoming difficult challenges through effective communication while also coming up with innovative, sustainable solutions to problems. They developed an in-depth understanding of operations and great on-ground problem solving skills while also improving on people management.?A Dark Store Manager looks after 1 property, while a district manager looks after 2.
2. Area Manager / Zonal Manager: A District Manager then progressed to an Area Manager role, responsible for looking after 3-4 properties, up to 8 LiveOps Leads and ~80 store operators (Zonal Managers looked after up to 6 properties and a proportional team size). The core focus for these managers in addition to operational metrics was building global solutions to operational problems with the help of other functions. They were also responsible for the P&L of their properties which required innovation on cost optimization and losses reduction.
3. Regional Operations Manager: A senior management role, an ROM was required to be strong in analytical and people management skills; using data to figure out focus areas and using their people skills to drive cross-functional collaboration and increase motivation across teams to move metrics. The role was responsible for city level profitability and required managing multiple cities by leading managers, liveops leads and hundreds of store operators.

Sharing individual recommendations for the managers below:

Zarrar Shakeel (Regional Operations Manager): Rarely do you come across people who you hire in your team that you realize in just a few months, are much better at the job than you are. When we hired Zarrar as the Regional Operations Manager role, I got this realization in just a few weeks. Under him, the central market improved not only on performance metrics but also in terms of team development. Among his team, people moved to data analytics and supply chain and he supported these moves fully by giving additional responsibilities to the remaining team as a step to progress vertically. By being on the front lines, Zarrar was able to identify valuable projects and cost cutting initiatives that contributed significantly to Airlift’s path to profitability. Due to his high management breadth, effective team building and powerful problem solving, he was always eager for delivering on additional projects and was also being considered for a vertical progression to the Country Retail Operations Manager for Pakistan. It is said that a good litmus test on hiring a candidate is to check whether you will be able to run the entire company with 100 such candidates. For Zarrar, this number is just 50.

Hassan Ahmad (Regional Operations Manager): Hassan was the final regional manager to join us to look after North’s Retail Operations. From his first week, he was thrown into chaos as the number of Islamabad dark stores increased from six to eighteen while performance metrics took a severe hit with an extreme reduction of management bandwidth. Hassan’s strengths took the spotlight as he motivated the Islamabad managers to take on larger responsibilities while being a true friend to all his team members. While the rest of the regional managers focused directly on dark store managers, he connected with the on-ground shift leads to keep them motivated and aligned with Airlift’s goals. During my time as Hassan’s manager, I have found him to have a keen eye for the right set of problems and then act as a coach and a mentor to his team in order to come up with solutions. While my time with Hassan has been short, I know that his unique people management skills will make him an effective manager capable of leading large teams.?

Karachi

1. Raza Abbas (Area Manager): Raza joined us as a dark store manager in October 2021, when Karachi was undergoing a rapid expansion. He was tasked to look after our most challenging double storey dark store; a property where due to infrastructural constraints, very smart solutions were needed to meet even the average performance metrics of timely deliveries and customer complaints. Raza rose not only to this challenge but he initiated country level projects to solve for faster processing times and complaint rates. He brought a fast pace to whatever he took on, while ensuring the right level of details were covered. A lot of Raza’s brainchilds went on to become solution strategies for solving business level problems on Out of Stock and Dark Store Network Optimizations. While Raza certainly has a bag full of strengths, among his strongest ones is his ability to back opinions with a lot of depth and numbers. Right before Airlift shut down, Raza was picked to look after the entire Karachi city Retail Operations. I’m extremely confident in Raza’s ability to master whatever he puts his mind to, and any company that picks him will see him do wonders.
2. Fahad Asghar (Area Manager):The first dark store manager of Karachi, Fahad served as a teacher to every dark store manager that followed him. He brought in great levels of empathy for store operators, ensuring that he created a culture of belonging with the store operators. Whenever we initiated a project that could have a potential adverse impact on store operators, Fahad was quick to push back and hunt for alternatives. Over the course of a year, Fahad grew from a dark store manager, to a district manager and then to an area manager, managing a team of more than 50 store operators. He is also behind executing an optimization project for retail which saved approximately 4 million PKR on a monthly basis for Karachi. Fahad’s radical honesty and empathy will make him a great manager in whichever company he decides to join.
3. Saad Akhtar (Area Manager): Saad is one of the youngest dark store managers we had on Retail, and he competed strongly with the most experienced people we had. Karachi had a couple of dark stores that were struggling on metrics and Saad was assigned a few of those where he turned the ship around in a matter of weeks. Saad’s humble character along with his ability to gel with store operators and leading from the front allows him to create a supportive yet high performance culture in his dark store. The youngest dark store manager also became one of the youngest area managers, when he took on leading multiple dark stores and partnering up with district managers to solve evolving challenges in his area. Saad’s strongest suit is his thorough follow-ups and ownership. You give a task to Saad, you can trust him to deliver on it while keeping you updated till the very end.?
4. Muhammad Usman Raza (Area Manager): While we see ownership as a common trait in people at Airlift, Usman sets an even higher bar of ownership. He does not settle until the project given to him is delivered at the highest quality. Although hired as a dark store manager, Usman took on the role of regional facilities lead for Karachi while managing his dark stores; both roles as intensive as the other. I was lucky to have him focus completely on Retail when his sprint as the regional facilities lead ended. Usman was then given Karachi’s biggest dark store, responsible for delivering ~ 700 daily orders, which suffered on performance as its former manager resigned. Under Usman, this dark store topped the charts within a week enabling Usman to become one of the most skilled Area Managers of Karachi. Along with extreme ownership, he brings an extreme form of humility that allows him to learn at a fast pace. I’m very proud to have worked with Usman and I’m sure his next manager will have the same to say for him.
5. Haider Hassan (District Manager): Karachi has been the only market without a regional operations manager for the longest time. Haider, with his data analytical skills, acted as a great resource for his peer dark store managers to identify problems through data and build the right visibilities on Retail to help automate the dark store managers to solve for the right problems in the absence of a dedicated line manager. Haider’s ability to structure execution projects and take them to the finish line is unique and a great value addition to any team he becomes a part of. In his discussions, Haider was always people-first, thinking about the impact any adverse change would have on the store operators and ways to minimize it. I’m bullish on Haider’s impact in whichever company he opts to work for as his data-backed decisions and structured executions make a very good combination.?
6. Talha Basharat (District Manager): Talha had interviewed for an Operations Deployment Lead (Product) role at Airlift, but I sensed his strengths to be in core Operations. I was quick to run him through the process of Dark Store Manager and I can easily say this was one of the best decisions I have taken as a recruiting manager at Airlift. Talha brought in established operations practices from his previous company to Airlift. He was at the forefront of setting operations best practices in Retail. While the others were focusing on figuring out required skill sets and evaluation criteria for shift leads, Talha charted out a skills matrix for store operators enabling the on ground task force to see a development journey ahead. This proved to be not only beneficial for the store operator’s learning but also for the entire Retail Operations as we could gauge which store operator was ready to take on bigger duties and which store operator required further training. Talha’s ability to look for problems and then devise smart solutions is what makes him a great operations manager.
7. Raheel Malick (District Manager): Raheel was one of the most senior dark store managers we had at Airlift. Where others might sprint on execution, Raheel would play a devil’s advocate to ensure there were no loose ends to any solution we might implement. Although he has prior experience of manufacturing and operations in established companies, Raheel’s flexibility allowed him to balance the set-in-stone practices of bigger corporations while experimenting with newer projects in the unexplored territory of q-commerce.

Lahore

1. Nouman Javaid (Area Manager): Nouman joined us as the first dark store manager for T2 cities (non-KLI), who was given the responsibility of managing 1 dark store of Faisalabad. While we were looking at hiring more managers for Faisalabad, Nouman grew exponentially fast to manage 5 darkstores and look after the entire city in a span of a few months. Managing an entire city while only remotely being in touch with the management team is hard, Nouman made it look easy as Faisalabad continued topping the country performance charts on timely deliveries, magnitude of orders and customer experience. When he had gotten a hold of retail operations, he started supporting the marketing team in on ground support for his city to increase the number of? orders further and make Faisalabad’s darkstores among the first ones to be profitable on a property level. I have yet to come across someone who grew so fast, looking after not only retail operations but also supporting delivery and supply functions as the most senior member of Faisalabad city. All in all, Nouman’s extreme ownership and bias to action, all the while remaining humble to the core will take him to great heights in whatever company he decides to work for.
2. Ali Akhwand (District Manager): One of Airlift’s values is “Be 1% Better Everyday”. Ali’s journey with Airlift has been an embodiment of just that. Starting off as one of the first dark store managers of Lahore, Ali was looking after half of Lahore in his first few months as we recruited dark store managers to look after the ever increasing number of retail properties. He scaled quickly to lead deployments of retail dark stores at an extremely fast pace towards the end of 2021 when Airlift was undergoing rapid expansion. Right after successfully running deployments, he picked up data analytics and SQL as a skill and within a few months transitioned out to a data analyst role. In his journey within Airlift, Ali showed how proactiveness in learning can open whichever path you wish to walk on.?
3. Rayham Afzal (Area Manager): Rayham has been an inspirational success story within Airlift. She joined us as a picker on day 1 and became a Retail Area Manager in her 2 year’s journey at Airlift. Her leadership was evident from day 1, when she used to naturally lead the entire team of pickers and packers and then take on interactions with riders whenever needed. As the only person with the most experience within the Retail function, she has been a teacher to everyone in Retail Operations, from the Market Lead all the way to the pickers. She has been an embodiment of hard work, ownership and drive; which has excelled her career, all the way from a picker to a manager looking after multiple dark stores, dozens of shift leads and hundreds of store operators.
4. Saad Chaudhry (Area Manager): Saad was one of the early hires we were proud to have recruited. His past experience along with his MBA were really needed in the nascent team of dark store managers. From the very start, he proved to be a backbone to retail through his data driven decisions and team management skills. Under him, the shift leads performed splendidly well and the whole of retail could decipher whether a shift lead was Saad’s direct reportee. He managed to scale his team through effective delegation, allowing him to take on bigger projects that had a country wide impact. Along the way, Saad got exceptionally better at root cause analysis and then running statistical tests to bake defensibility in every experiment that he undertook. Among the senior Area Managers, he was on the path to be considered for the Regional Operations Manager role, to look after the entire retail operations for Lahore. With his thoughtful and data-backed communications along with team development skills, he can become an asset to any company he joins.
5. Farhan ul Hassan (Area Manager): Farhan was the 3rd dark store manager that joined us in Lahore. From day 1, he jumped right in the action, being on the front lines with his team to understand challenges and learn from not only the shift leads but also from the store operators. His dark stores were often selected for multiple experiments just because we knew that Farhan would ensure all possible loopholes and gaps are highlighted and fixed before a nationwide roll out. Although performance metrics were incentivized for dark store managers, Farhan lived by the rule “company first” and did not mind taking a hit on metrics as long as the experiments helped Airlift improve. During his time at Airlift, he was quick to learn new skills as he mastered Excel and then picked up SQL for not only his personal development but also to support the retail team on quick visibilities and insights that could otherwise take some time from the analytics team. Farhan embodies grit, curiosity and problem solving; traits that can make him a very special addition to any company.

Islamabad

1. Usman Mashood (Zonal Manager): Usman was among the first Dark Store Managers we hired for Pakistan, the only one in the North for a long time. Although hired for just looking after one dark store, Usman took care of the entire Islamabad for some time till new managers were hired. He leads with curiosity, ensuring that he understands the “why” behind initiatives. Once he is convinced, Usman deploys an extreme bias to action to take projects to the finish line. When he listens, he does so with humility and when he speaks, he does so with conviction. As the first and only Zonal Manager, Usman has been a teacher to many, even those senior to him, mostly because his curiosity had enabled him to understand concepts and logics that were otherwise just accepted on the surface. Before Airlift shut down, Usman was among the few managers who were on the path to be considered for the Regional Operations Manager role, responsible for looking after the entire city’s operations. I’m extremely confident in Usman’s ability to perform as a manager, and I look forward to the impact that he will create on whichever path he chooses.
2. Rubas Zaheer (Area Manager): Rubas is a team mate that I’ve been most proud of, as I saw him scale from a fresh graduate out of GIKI to a very well rounded manager who was leading large teams effectively. He has been the most consistent leader in terms of performance and eagerness to deliver. While he grew, he ensured his shift leads took on projects and developed under his leadership. Every project partner that he worked with from other functions had great words to say for him. His deployments of multiple retail properties were among the smoother ones we had for Pakistan and his partnerships with infrastructure leads took even the most challenging projects to successful completions. Despite having achieved so much as one of the youngest Area Managers we had, Rubas remained humble to the core. His drive, ownership and leadership abilities remain among the best of the lot I’ve had the opportunity to work with.
3. Yumna Ahmed (Area Manager): In my short experience, Yumna has been among the few females in leadership that have shown how effective and uniquely valuable women are as leaders. Managing dark stores requires a lot of resilience and resolve, especially while dealing with store operators and riders. She brought in the highest levels of courage while deploying empathy to deal with operators who performed very well under her leadership. Yumna has an eye for identifying the right problems. While the whole of Retail was focused on efficiency optimisations, she had uncovered loop holes on operator and rider frauds that were resulting in losses much bigger than the benefits we were getting from operating efficiencies. She did not just stop there, but went ahead to formulate complex solutions to curb any fraud and reduce losses at a company level. With her leadership style full of empathy and resolve, I’m very confident that she will be a valuable asset to any company that she opts to work for.
4. Saqlain Yaqoob (District Manager): Saqlain joined us as part of the final cohort of dark store managers. While we were hiring mostly for managers to look after a single property, Saqlain came in directly as a district manager to look after two properties from day one. He took on this challenge and developed his shift leads in the first quarter to lead store operators effectively and perform on metrics, and then took on multiple country level projects in the second quarter. This year, Airlift remained operational throughout Eid holidays and Saqlain took upon himself to support entire Islamabad operations to ensure Retail did their best to give a great customer experience over Eid. He did not stop there, but rather documented all key learnings and proposed alternative solutions to manage the next Eid much better. What has stood out in Saqlain is his ability to work well under pressure along with his analytical skills. Just like at Airlift, Saqlain will always prove to be an excellent resource who goes above and beyond what is required of him.