As the director of marketing and PR and also as the special assistant to the president of Pathao, Sayeda Nabila Mahabub, who brought in changes like loyalty programs, called Pathao Points, which significantly boosted customer retention rate, shares her career experience of 10 years with ICE Today as a woman who has been succeeding conventions and challenging social standards in Bangladesh.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. How has your role at Pathao helped you grow professionally?
Soon after graduating from BRAC University, I started my career as an MT (Management Trainee) at Radio Foorti, MGH Group. From being in Sales and Marketing to RJ-ing to having my very own vertical, my experience there was quite exciting! After that, I worked with Banglalink and Yonder on brand and content marketing.
Currently, I am working as the Director of Marketing and PR and Special Assistant to the President of Pathao. In the ten years of my career, the last four have been quite a ride! I started at Pathao with just five team members and minimal knowledge about startup and app marketing. Today, I look back and wonder – how! Pathao has enabled me to think more strategically. It has allowed me to broaden my knowledge, helped me become a compassionate and inclusive leader, and taught me to be more courageous. My biggest achievement is my team! Being a young group of professionals, they sure have taken ownership and responsibilities of one of the biggest brands in the country. They inspire me to become better every day. For me, travelling is synonymous with life. I have explored 23 countries, and I had plans to visit 40 before I turned 40. However, the global pandemic has knocked that goal firmly awry. I also enjoy taking photographs: landscapes mostly. I like capturing the moments on my camera.
Although delivery and ride-sharing services already had a strong foothold in the country before the pandemic hit, platforms like Pathao were used primarily by a younger population segment. How much has the mass digital adaptation catalyzed by the pandemic increased Pathao’s user base?
With the onset of the pandemic, many things have changed and it seems that people started to accept these changes as well. Digitization, which is the trend of this new era, is much more accepted than before. For example, people use credit cards more than cash or MFS and it’s slowly becoming a tendency. Similarly, people have started to accept more online services like food and parcels during this pandemic. People couldn’t go to shops, and people couldn’t move, so they ordered online and there was a considerable increase in online order services. Right now, we’re a family of 8 million users; before the pandemic, we were a family of almost 7 million. And we hope it will increase as we expand. We initially had a much younger generation, the average age of our user base was 35 at Pathao. But now, we can see that the older and mature generations are using the app and the digital services. Concurrently, our smartphone penetration has increased significantly during the pandemic.
Pathao has played a crucial part in aiding the growth of e and f-commerce, especially during the pandemic. Have you had to increase riders or add more features to your services to support a growing number of merchants?
Absolutely. Pathao’s courier services have increased exponentially since the pandemic. We had to increase our warehousing to onboard more riders. We at Pathao initiated a change where the existing riders who couldn’t work for the ride-sharing got the opportunity to deliver food, parcels, or courier services. What we did was just set up a toggle feature which allowed them to have all these three services open in their app. So wherever they get a request, they can choose any option. Not only did we have to increase our riders, but we also had to ensure their well being. The health ministry has permitted us to vaccinate our riders, and we are working towards that. As they are the real front-liners, it is our responsibility to ensure their safety.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we stopped collecting our share from the workers. These are just some of the changes that we brought about to aid our riders. The way our policemen, doctors, nurses, and firefighters are working, not just them, the way our cleaners are working, by risking their lives, and our food delivery agents and courier delivery agents they are all the front liners.
We also added features in our app, where the riders have to randomly take a picture in an interval and send it to us to ensure that the rider is wearing a mask and ensuring safety. We added more features for our customers’ apps during this pandemic, like Tong, Health, and Pharma. We also launched bongo. Bored? Watch Bongo. Need to buy groceries? Order from pathao tong. Need medicines? Contact pathao pharma. We onboarded Lazz pharma, Tamanna pharmacy, and many more pharmacies on pathao.
Even though companies such as Pathao were among the few, who are doing quite well during the pandemic due to the nature of its service, any specific challenges you have faced during this time?
There have been numerous challenges. From Pathao’s perspective, the internal challenge was that we were suddenly working from home. So, time adjustment was a thing that was going on in most of the companies. There was no perfect schedule for working; I would have to attend meetings at midnight and sometimes at 8 am. We were all going a bit crazy, and we didn’t know how to balance things out. I think that was one of the biggest challenges internally.
External challenges were the ride-sharing apps closing down. It impacted the business. Because it’s not just about Pathao, over 300000 and their families were dependent on the company for their livelihood. It’s not just about us; it’s about those people. When they suddenly find themselves without a stable source of income, it becomes equally our responsibility to help them in some way. We tried to reach out and give aid to them and allowed them to join other services and keep working, so, yes, that was a big challenge.
The second challenge would be that the government tried to help as much as possible in every sector.
Still, they also had limited resources, so reaching out to them and getting support for our riders was challenging but not impossible, and we did get that down.
Another challenge was constantly changing our plans as the authorities weren’t very stable with their lockdown plans for safety purposes. It was on us to change our plans and strategies for the safety of our customers and riders. Every week we had to regroup and re-discuss what we should do next. So this was a constant effort. And we had to deal with this continuous challenge.
Tell us about ‘Freedom for All’ – how beneficial was Pathao’s recruitment of transgender people for their community? How has the response been? Could being a rider be a safe, respected, and coveted job for transgender people in our country?
‘Freedom for All’ was my baby project. Two years back, we did a campaign where we delivered food, where our riders were in Joker costumes. And while coming up with different strategies, suddenly it hit me that why not. Pathao is all about “moving Bangladesh”. Pathao is a change maker. Pathao believes in going against the norm and doing something different. So why don’t we onboard transgenders? No one gives them a job. They are in a situation where they are not given enough respect. So initially, it was a plan for only 10-20 people, but we set it for 50 people, as 50 years of moving Bangladesh. We contacted TransEnd, and they were really supportive and excited about this initiative, so we partnered with them.
As a young woman in a leadership position, how would you assess the current environment for women working in Bangladesh? What challenges do women in the workforce still face?
I think the current situation in Bangladesh is way better than what it was five years ago or a decade back. Overall, you see more women in leadership roles like Rubaba Dowla, and from StartUp Bangladesh Tina Jabeen, there are so many women right now who are doing so well in different places in Bangladesh, and they are taking off more roles, but we need more. When I see big companies like Unilever, Robi or Grameenphone, or even the local companies that we see, Pran, we can see male dominance in higher positions. Although the situation has improved, families have become more accepting that their daughters-in-law or daughters would work outside and often work late. But it is still a small sector. I still have a few female team members who cannot stay late because that would cause difficulties in their families or homes.
There are two things. Firstly, we need to change as women. We always think that if we work hard, we will be rewarded accordingly. But sadly, that’s not the case here. If I want to achieve something, I have to give double the effort to prove my worthiness. We are not easily given what we deserve. And every time you will talk to someone or hear their stories, you’ll listen to the same thing they had to ask for it. There is nothing wrong with asking for it. We cannot live in the dilemma of why I have to ask for it, why cannot just get it because I have earned it through hard work. We have to change that kind of mindset.
And secondly, the companies need to ensure a healthy environment for women to come in and work, grow and be respected and accepted for what they are. Just because a woman is pregnant doesn’t make her brain go shorter or smaller. It doesn’t make her weak. What a pregnant woman has to go through, working with a baby in her stomach, with the amount of pain she goes through, and whatever work you throw at her, compared to that, the environment is nothing. That is where the culture of the company comes in. Pathao is a place where You can talk, and you can speak up. Such as my executives, can go and talk to the CFO and CEO if they want to, without my approval and my permission.
The change has to happen from both ways. It has to happen from us (women) where we ask and talk about what we want and why we want what we want, and similarly, the organization needs to set up an environment where if the women feel uncomfortable, they can speak up. The organization needs to advocate for women, not just for women, but for anyone who thinks it is not easy to talk.