Build a team that is in love with the mission — Nikhil’s advice to leaders

Meet Nikhil Shanker, who has been building and scaling multiple businesses and capabilities through his 5 years with UC.

Nikhil joined us in 2017, to lead UC’s Handymen and Cleaning services. He built the supply side product market fit and scaled these categories 3–5x. He then moved on to lead our North India business for Homes Services where he built quality and training systems for our repairs businesses. For the last 2.5 years, he has been leading UC’s Customer and Partner experience mandates, building high quality technology led support for our customers and partners.

Nikhil Shanker, VP — Customer & Partner Experience

Nikhil lives in Gurgaon with his family comprising his parents, wife, two kids, and their dog. He is a fan of the outdoors — he loves playing football, going cycling and is a certified scuba diver. In his free time, he enjoys wildlife photography and maintains a photo page. He also enjoys cooking for his friends and family, with members receiving their share of oddly shaped and spiced dishes.

Top L: Growing up in Patna; Top R: At Mayo College, a boarding school in Ajmer; Bottom L: Playing football at IIM Lucknow; Bottom R: With family in Gurgaon. The UC team also bonds like a family. Many members got married while at UC, had children, bought their first car, bought a home — basically grew up together through an important part of their lives.

As a leader, Nikhil is regarded as empathetic, a patient listener, and someone who gives his team the space to build on their strengths and deliver outstanding outcomes.

Read on to understand how Nikhil leads and motivates his team.

What was your journey to joining Urban Company, and how have you grown since?

I was born in Patna where I spent my initial years. My father worked with State Bank of India, and his job led us to different locations, and me to six very fun years of boarding school in Ajmer. I subsequently did my graduation in Biotechnology, worked in IT, did my MBA, worked in marketing and am now working in business development and operations.

Being fluid and open to new opportunities have helped me take up new challenges and keep learning.

Before UC, I was working with HCL and had just finished setting up a technology & marketing partnership between Manchester United and HCL Technologies.

Setting up HCL’s partnership with Manchester United, prior to joining UC. Folks at UC come with diverse industry experiences, which helps bring in diverse points of view.

When the UC opportunity came, it provided a canvas to build something that would impact consumers like myself, and create livelihoods for many many people — this really excited me. This thread has remained consistent through my five years here, where we have relentlessly focused on building what is right for our consumers and our service partners.

What is something unique about your team here?

A typical team member at UC is very smart, hard working, deeply caring about people and the business, very self aware and focused on doing right by the end user. Such team members are very difficult to find, and everyone at UC spends a lot of time identifying and hiring team members who raise the bar. Once we have such members on the team, it’s then a question of ensuring that they are working on impactful challenges and have enough space to drive outcomes and leave their mark.

Wednesday evening football. Team members from across the org catch up for sports. Right now it’s football, Ultimate Frisbee, and Cricket.

What is the most common challenge that managers face while leading teams?

In building a scaled on-demand standardized services platform, we are creating a global first-class product. And we are doing this while being obsessive about next month’s growth and the next user’s experience.

A key challenge therefore becomes balancing immediate outcomes with building the business sustainably for the long run. This requires structuring the team correctly to enable both fast paced execution and deep thinking, getting teams cross functionally aligned on a limited set of high impact outcomes, setting up a strong muscle for execution, and being ok with some failures on long term bets.

At a team offsite 6 months back. Off-sites are a good opportunity for cross-functional teams to bond, and to step back to define the next part of the journey. The outcome of this session helped automate our order fulfilment recovery systems.

What’s your Personal Mantra, and where did it come from?

I focus on defining time bound outcomes and creating goal clarity, and having a view on input capabilities for these outcomes. This helps ensure that we maintain an execution rhythm on immediate outcomes, while also building business capabilities for long term outcomes.

What is a piece of advice you give to new managers at Urban Company?

At UC, you will have the opportunity to improve the lives of millions of consumers (like yourself, your families and your friends), impact livelihood for millions of service professionals (many of whom will not be economically well off), and build a global first-of-its-kind scaled business.

With service partners in Moradabad, on a drive to bring on-board new AC professionals. UC provides a unique opportunity to impact people’s lives. And being hands-on helps solve problems faster.

Build a team who are in love with the mission. And make sure you enjoy the journey.

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