Meet our new Head of Engineering, Rahul — Son of a truck owner, former VP of Engineering in a world-class logistics startup.
There are two kinds of people in this world. People who have found their purpose and people who are still searching. Rahul spent years in the Indian startup world. He’s seen lots of industries in his 15 years of experience. Working with Yahoo and several startup companies in payment and real estate, he still found himself reaching for more. Everything changed after his move into the logistics industry. He started with Rivigo, one of the biggest logistics tech startups in India. Through working there he came to realize something, he wanted to focus on solving problems that are worth solving. Problems that are impacting many people’s lives. He believes that in the logistics industry, there are many basic problems worth solving because they affect society and the economy in a larger scope.
“One thing that really struck me is that logistics is an area that I am personally connected to. My father is a truck owner, I have been seeing his struggle for the last 20 years. I want to solve the problems for the people like my father.”
Rahul had found his purpose.
It’s clear when talking with Rahul that he strongly believes logistics can bring forward lots of progress. “We can provide convenience and get them more connected. We can bring Social impact with technology in a sector that is (relatively) untouched. And the economic impact is clear because logistics is the backbone of every country.” But at the same time, he understands that much is needed to be done to reach that point. “The entire spectrum of logistics needs to be evolved and with technology, people will evolve. There are so many fundamental problems that so far are neglected. India is actually late to (develop technology in) logistics and Indonesia is even more, but late is better than never.”
But why Indonesia? Why Kargo?
Rahul is clearly one of the best engineering leaders in India. Graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Rahul also crushed Kargo’s highly difficult technical test about algorithm, data structure and problem solving. If we also mention about several patent and publications that Rahul has done (such as ‘Carbon Feeder — A Pluggable Framework for Carmot Changelog Processing’ for Yahoo!), it is not an overstatement if we say that Rahul is a leader with a very strong technical background. Many people (including me) were wondering what drove him to this country. When talking with Rahul, we were curious about what drew him in and his answer was very clear.
“To work with diverse teams. Working with people from different regions brings a lot of positivity and different perspective to solve the problem. that’s why so many global companies are after diversity. The way Kargo’s team is built is through recruiting diverse talent. We are working with a team at Belarus, such a young state but so diverse. Diversity is a factor that I wanted exposure to. When I talked to people here, I found they are more respectful, humble and egoless.”
Compared to his previous jobs in India, the amount of diversity he’s experienced here has been much greater. Furthermore, Rahul spoke passionately about why he chose Kargo and what stood out to him. It turns out he was drawn in the moment he read Kargo’s engineering practice. It made him excited to explore more about the company. He soon realized that Kargo would be his next destination. The culture and values of Kargo, which he saw in the interview session with the whole team, is the main thing that drove him to the decision.
“I was very serious about Kargo since the day I was exposed to the engineering practice and company values. I saw the right cultural values, a problem statement that I am personally connected to, and a tech-first focus. From the wisdom that I have developed over years of working with startups in India, I know there are certain traits of a company that will either cause it to go really big, or die off in a few years. I have seen companies go through tough times because of certain traits. What I could tell about Kargo early on is that it has got the right values. It has the recipe to get big, and do so in a sustainable manner.”
Rahul’s wisdom on what makes a good workplace environment comes from years in the startup world. In our conversation, we asked him what makes Kargo unique to him. He highlighted a few key reasons: psychological safety, customer obsession, and the right ambition. When he first interacted with people at Kargo, one thing he immediately saw was an open and transparent environment. He explained that is key when building a high performing team.
“In an open and transparent environment, Everyone psychologically feels safe and free to speak about their ideas. I was happily surprised to see how highly this is valued at Kargo.”
The next thing that Rahul saw early on is the obsession towards customers. At Kargo, he saw that people are trying to understand users’ problems and building the right solution to solve their problems. While Kargo has its own vision on how to do it, everyone knows that all decisions are made to benefit the customer in the long run. furthermore, he believes the way Kargo is hiring, having a high bar, to be very alluring. Kargo’s team is built on recruiting diverse talent and we operate with distributed team culture to build the technology on Silicon Valley’s level. This is a very ambitious vision and having these kinds of things early on is very important in his opinion.
Rahul believes strongly in how a company can leverage tech. He saw that at Kargo, we have a tech co-founder, which is very important. When there is a strong tech co-founder, the sentiments and working style of the tech team are well understood by everybody. Because of that, there are so many good things about the way that technology is executed. He has seen many startups try to solve business problems, who failed to understand that tech and business should work in partnership with each other. Tech acts as a service to the business. Here at Kargo, we are building tech in a very sustainable manner. He believes that engineers should be involved in business and product decisions as well so they own the problems and become problem solvers, not just code monkeys. Another thing that impressed Rahul is Kargo’s high focus on documentation which, in his opinion, is very essential towards building a distributed team culture.
The impact Rahul wants to make at Kargo
Being new to the company, Rahul’s positive impression and outlook on the people and culture is exciting. Towards the end of our conversation, we asked him an important question. What kind of impact do you want to have on Kargo? Here is his response:
“What I want to do is two-fold. First, is to really build a great tech company. Be able to create a brand of Kargo as one of the best tech companies in the world. Second is the vision and the mission in which we are here; to bring in more efficiency in the entire logistics ecosystem, the business problem we are solving. I want to bring impact on both of these sides.
Rahul has clear goals for his future at Kargo. His motivation and confidence fit right into the ambitious and collaborative environment that Kargo is trying to create. At this point, we were ready to wrap up our insightful conversation with Rahul. But he told us he had one last thing to say. He topped off the interview with this: “I really feel that we have a lot of first principle thinkers in the company. People understand to not just do it, but to ask the right questions. I also feel that there are many people whose heart is in the right place. They are fully in for the company and the vision and mission that we have. They are deeply involved to make Kargo a great company. These are very positive signals which make me look forward to coming into the office every day with a big smile on my face.”
Kargo is solving problems that are impacting many people’s lives and affecting society and the economy in a large scope. If you are interested to solve these problems as Rahul does, visit Kargo’s career page to ride together with us.
