To Raj Beri, head of Asia Pacific for on-demand food delivery platform Uber Eats, being an authentic leader is not only key to achieving a strong sense of personal well-being, it is an essential ingredient necessary to unify leaders and teams with organisational mission. In his executive leadership capacity, however, equally important for Beri, is the drive to inspire a workplace culture where employees from across the organisation also feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work.
While “authenticity” has become a popular leadership buzz-term in recent years, to Beri, being authentic includes being immersed in the full spectrum of experiences the organisation offers. How, for example, an individual feels about the purpose of the work they do, the way that work and personal time integrate, the career opportunities available and what motivates individuals to do their best work. “These days, more than ever, we spend a lot of time connected to our work, so it is important we have an authentic, integrated balance,” says Beri who points out by setting up employee resource groups — referred to by Uber as ERGs — designed to connect, empower and support employees, ideas emerge, which can be implemented to make working for Uber more fulfilling.
“Because of employee-led ERGs, some really good ideas have surfaced, which we have acted on,” says Beri who is the executive sponsor of the Women at Uber ERG. A notable example is a programme which enables females to reconnect smoothly to their career progression following maternity leave. “We still have work to do, but across the organisation I feel this is an area we are making good progress,” notes Beri who also credits health and wellness initiatives, comprehensive learning and development programmes and unlimited paid leave with creating a platform that supports authenticity.
After spending more than two decades building operational and leadership competencies across different industry sectors, Beri says the authentic leadership qualities he ranks above others, is empathy and compassion. Citing LinkedIn’s CEO, Jeff Weiner for the definition, Beri defines empathy as the feeling of awareness towards other people’s emotions and an endeavour to understand how they feel. Compassion, on the other hand, is an emotional response that creates a desire to actively help. “Without empathy and compassion, I don’t think you can be a complete leader,” says Beri.
Meanwhile, compared to his early tenure as a manager, Beri says that these days he spends the most amount of time focusing on areas where he used to focus the least amount of time. In particular, his management lens is focused on the people aspects of the business. “It all starts with bringing the right people into the organisation,” explains Beri. “The aim is to envisage what a complete team look like,” he adds. To this end, he says it is important to be self-aware of strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and fill these gaps with talent that have the traits and skill-sets to consolidate the team.
As a self-proclaimed “career switcher”, although he completed his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Toronto and received his master’s in aerospace engineering from Arizona State University, Beri says his interests were distracted by opportunities outside the field of engineering. During the first decade of the new millennium product design was one area he explored as well as working as a freelance music journalist. At the time, the media industry was transitioning to digital, which sparked a further interest in the technology-related aspects of the media industry. “Journalism was my springboard into tech,” says Beri. However, realising he needed to expand his toolbox of business knowledge, he completed an MBA at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Equipped with an MBA coupled with the analytical skills associated with engineering, enabled Beri to join a digital consultancy company where he worked with large media organisations helping them to strategise their nascent digital on-line offerings. “At that point, organisations were working out how to monetise and install apps on mobile devises,” recalls Beri. His consultancy work led to the inquisitive “itch”, as Beri describes his next career incarnation, to become a tech entrepreneur in the travel industry, where he established two start-up enterprises, both of which were subsequently incubated by Oversee.net, a technology company that owns and operates a portfolio of travel and consumer finance companies. “The main lesson I learned from my entrepreneurial experiences, is that it takes a lot of passion and energy to take an idea from zero to one,” notes Beri who has also worked on the operations side of second phase growth technology enterprises.
Generally happy in his earlier management roles, but looking for a new challenge that would have a wider impact on society, when the opportunity to join Uber Rides emerged; Beri and his wife had no hesitation in moving to India. “Coming to Asia was a huge experience for me,” says Beri, not least of which was having a hands-on role in creating new jobs and new mobility options. Although his family background is Indian, Beri spent his formative years in Toronto and most of his adult life in the US. “Asia is probably the most heterogeneous region in the world,” notes Beri who is savouring the opportunity of leading an organisation that has its business compass pointing towards the future.
Since his transition from head of Uber Rides India, where he was responsible for operations across multiple cities to head of Uber Eats, Asia Pacific just over 18 months ago, Beri has been leading a business which currently represents the second largest market globally for Uber Eats — plus the fastest growing market in terms of volume of deliveries. Since launching the Uber Eats app three and a half years ago, globally, the business has grown to serve more than 500 cities in 36 countries across six continents. In Hong Kong, where the Uber Eats app platform was launched in 2016, the number of restaurant partners now tops more than 2,500. Partnerships not only include familiar global restaurant brands, but also local, family-run restaurants, which Uber refer to as “local heroes”. Helping locally operated restaurants expand their businesses, says Beri, is one of the rewarding aspects of the partnership relationships. At the same time, as digital applications continue to influence lifestyle choices, he expects Asia Pacific’s “foody” cities like Hong Kong, to create opportunities for Uber Eats to move beyond the food delivery service to meet demand for the different ways that consumers want to experience and interact with food. A trend, which Beri says, will allow more consumers to enjoy authentic food experience.
