Almost a decade ago, Uber entered the Sri Lankan market as a ridesharing platform, which has today expanded to Uber Eats, groceries, and more.  

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Morning Business, Uber Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah discussed the growth of Uber in Sri Lanka, his personal journey from Sri Lanka to Silicon Valley, and the future of Uber’s operations in the region.

With the recent launch of Uber Green in Sri Lanka, he also addressed how Uber planned to incorporate technological advancements to enhance services and customer experiences, while also contributing to the global goal of zero emissions by 2040. 

Following are excerpts:

How does it feel to return to Sri Lanka, which is your birthplace, after achieving such success abroad? What are the steps you have taken to retain and strengthen your connection to Sri Lanka while also working in Silicon Valley?

It’s been some time since I was last in the country. I have not been in Sri Lanka since before Covid, perhaps a little over 10 years now. The development here has been just tremendous to see. 

Many of my memories are from my early years. I left Sri Lanka relatively young. We would come back every 2-3 years for a long stretch of time, and then we didn’t return for a while. So, for me, it’s a bit of a time jump. 

I’ve seen Sri Lanka grow through the ’70s and into the early ’80s. Subsequently, I didn’t see it grow again until the 2000s. Watching the progression over this time period, I feel so proud to see how the country has developed, and to see that it’s such an important market for us at Uber and how we’re enjoying significant growth here. We are enjoying the opportunity that we’re creating for our riders and earners in this market. Therefore, it is an exciting place to be right now.

You have achieved remarkable success in Silicon Valley. To what do you attribute your achievements and what key factors have driven your career progression? Can you share some of the challenges you have faced in this journey and how you overcame them?

As with many Sri Lankan immigrants who have done well outside the country, the values that our parents taught us here have helped us transcend the globe, among them the focus on education, grit, and hard work. 

Being a multicultural diaspora and as islanders, we’re also very comfortable working across different cultures and different backgrounds. That enables us to work with other cultures and in other environments. My career journey has allowed me to live in many countries. I attribute much of the ability to interact with people from different backgrounds to what my parents have taught me, which comes very naturally to people from Sri Lanka.

Your career began in engineering before transitioning to finance. Can you walk us through the journey that led you to make such a significant switch? How has your background in engineering influenced your approach to finance in your overall career?

My mother went to Ladies’ College and was a preschool teacher, while my father, who went to Royal College, Colombo, was an accountant. When they migrated to the US, they operated a preschool as a small business. 

As small business owners and entrepreneurs, I saw firsthand the challenges of running a business. It actually discouraged me from pursuing a degree in finance and business. I entered the engineering field instead, where I earned an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering before proceeding to do a Master’s in Engineering. 

Later in my career, I worked for a large global chemical company, where they asked me to restart a plant that had not been run for many years. The Plant Manager had given me a tremendous amount of latitude in how I could spend to get the plant operational. That was a striking moment for me because, for many years before the project was assigned to me, I had been tasked with finding ways to reduce the cost. 

When I was given a blank check to spend whatever was necessary to get the plant operational, it was a wake-up call for me on the power of finance and how the world was driven by supply and demand. We had an opportunity in which there was significant demand and no supply, and it was really a no-holds-barred attitude towards ‘let’s create this product’. That really attracted me to the world of business. 

I overcame some of the nightmares associated with being a son of entrepreneurs and the challenges that my parents had. Subsequently, I attended business school and made the pivot into finance. I think the engineering mindset and skills one acquires to solve problems provide a terrific foundation for those who enter the business world.

Uber is a very mission-driven company. Our goal is to help clients go anywhere and get anything. But how we bring that to life is by creating supply and demand in the marketplace. 

The demand lies in the opportunities for consumers to be able to get where they need to in a very safe and highly reliable way, whether it be for personal travel, commuting, or leisurely travel. Meanwhile, on the other side, it involves creating ways for people around the world – who sometimes have no other option in how they can earn money due to time commitments and language restrictions – to be able to earn. We bring those two elements together with the power of technology. 

We do so on a global scale, and it feels very rewarding as we travel the world and talk to people who both use the product and who are earning through it, who describe how life-changing it has been for them. In some of our markets and during just the early stages in Sri Lanka, we have had tremendous success in helping women enter the workforce by providing them a very safe and reliable product. 

Safety is really the core of what we do. When you call an Uber, you know what fare you can expect to be charged. We know who is picking you up. We monitor your location by GPS. You can share this information with a family member so they know where you are at all times. All this safety technology is a vast improvement over the alternatives you might have been looking at before we entered the market.

You are in Sri Lanka to launch Uber Green featuring Electric Vehicles (EVs) and hybrid cars. Do you believe it is realistic to achieve a fleet of zero-emission vehicles by 2040, including in Sri Lanka? What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you foresee in achieving this ambitious target, both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere?

In 2020, our Chief Executive Officer (CEO) led the charge with a mandate that we intend to have zero emissions on the platform by 2040. It was a very bold goal when in today’s context, I believe, some countries are even beginning to question their commitment to the levels of electrification. 

We remain very committed. We see significant adoption of the product in the countries that it’s on offer. Uber Green is available in over 170 cities today, and Sri Lanka will be an addition to that. If it follows the pattern that we’ve seen in other countries, we believe that when it comes to riders who are conscious about planetary health and who recognise that this is a problem that all of us have to work on together to address, this is a product that they are likely to choose.

For Sri Lanka in particular, the challenges today concerning vehicle supply are ones that we are going to have to work through. We’re in conversation with Government authorities on how to help unlock that. I’m confident that a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) will figure out how to solve the problem. It may not be tomorrow, but in the coming quarters and years, I’m sure we will find a way of addressing that.

What are your expectations for the Sri Lankan market given the economic downturn and its impact on business plans? In the context of Uber seeming to have so much attraction here, how does the company perceive and plan to capitalise on the opportunity in Sri Lanka?

The power that we create in the local economy is often not understood. Since we do this both on the rides and on the Uber Eats platform, let us separate the two for the purpose of discussion. 

When considering the rides platform, we are doing a few things. We’re helping enable commerce by creating a commuting option where it is now possible for people to get to their office in a reliable fashion and come home after dark in a safe manner; all of this creates an environment in which people can now enter the workforce, whereas there were limitations to do so before. 

We have seen this play out very consistently in a number of our global markets. It really is a source of empowerment in bringing people into the workforce. The other factor which is of great significance for our rides is tourism, which is of much importance for Sri Lanka. A fun fact is that in the last 90 days, we have had travellers from over 120 different countries use the Uber platform in Sri Lanka. 

The power of this app lies in the fact that it has extremely widespread adoption across the globe. Upon landing at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA), a traveller need no longer be concerned about whether they possess the right currency. They need not worry about whether the taxi or tuk-tuk is taking the most direct route. They need not be preoccupied with whether they are conveying the address of the destination to the driver in a coherent manner in the event there are multiple hotels of the same brand. 

We can help solve all these issues because the traveller has been enabled to communicate in their local language using a currency form that they have already loaded onto the app, creating a seamless commuter experience.

As far as Uber Eats is concerned, what we are most proud of in Sri Lanka is that it has been such an accelerator for small businesses. I believe over 80% of the merchants on our food delivery platform are small businesses. That is a very high percentage for Uber. 

Therefore, we are convinced that we have created an ecosystem that empowers small business owners to grow their businesses and to digitise them, enabling them to progress from operating through a pen-and-paper-based handwritten menu to now being a digitised enterprise, gaining access to more consumers in the process, as well as to analytics in order to understand consumer behaviour. It really is a powerful tool to help merchants grow their businesses.

What growth trajectory do you envision for Uber’s ride-hailing and food delivery services in the country? Are there plans to introduce new services or innovations tailored to the local market?

Yes, absolutely. There are a few things that I would like to say in this regard. We are always looking to introduce new services. Uber Green, which was launched recently in Sri Lanka, is an example of a new service that we’re bringing to the country. It is something that has been asked for by our consumers and we’re excited about its launch. 

We have also launched our intercity product recently. A traveller considering a trip from Colombo to Galle, for example, can now order an Uber to make that trip. It is a far more cost-effective manner of travel than other options are likely to provide, and it is safe. It creates another way for people to get around the country, and we’re quite excited about these two new products. 

I would also like to highlight our introduction of the two-wheeler category of vehicles, which has been a significant success for us. 

Lastly, we will continue to focus on the Eats product. What we can contribute to the market is not just food delivery; we can also help empower delivery of other services that are useful for the community, i.e. in small-scale logistics. We have seen this play out in other markets where, upon having the capability of moving goods around, we can create a delivery mechanism for small businesses to take their goods and services to other parts of the country. 

We are always looking for opportunities to grow and to introduce new products. The ideas that will come to market will be those that we hear from our consumers and from our earners. 

What role do you see Sri Lanka playing in Uber’s larger global strategy, and what impact do you hope Uber will have on the country’s economy and society in the coming years?

Grocery has been very exciting for us, with very strong growth for the company on account of this platform. Although all the business products are growing well, I find grocery in particular to be quite exciting. When you consider the fact that we have all three of our business lines in Sri Lanka along with our membership product, which we introduced to the country about a year ago, what we have seen in other countries is the ability for a consumer to move seamlessly between these.

For example, consider a consumer who has used our rides platform very consistently who is now looking to order something to eat. They switch to the Uber Eats platform because they already have the app. As an Uber Eats consumer, they have been ordering restaurant food – hoppers or burgers, for instance – for some time. They now wish to purchase a grocery item and have the ability to switch to that option. This ability to move across platforms and the cohesion that it creates with the membership has been an excellent product for us.

Speaking for myself, I ordered my first Uber Eats from a hotel just last week. Back at home, I wanted to get a chocolate éclair, and that was my Saturday morning order!

How does Uber plan to incorporate sustainability into its long-term strategy, particularly in emerging markets like Sri Lanka? What technological innovations is Uber exploring to enhance its services and customer experience?

I believe the launch of Uber Green in Sri Lanka really highlights how we address this. We made the commitment towards zero emissions by 2040. The Uber Green product is indeed our flagship. We have seen a very strong global adoption of the product.

We allow users to see on the app how much they have saved in terms of their emissions footprint over their lifetime as consumers by choosing the green option. This enables users to determine how much they have helped the planetary carbon footprint by choosing Uber Green over other options.

This is important to today’s generation. People are very aware of the impact of climate change and everyone is looking for ways to make a choice. Driving electrification is something that is core to our mission. Therefore the Uber Green product, which will be a mix of both hybrid and full EV vehicles, will be a key element therein.

In addition to that, we are working with merchants around the world on the UberEats platform on how to drive some of their packaging to be more sustainable options and what we can do to help bring our scale and size to help them source more sustainable packaging.

What advice would you give to young professionals in Sri Lanka who aspire to build successful careers in global companies, and how can they leverage their local experience and education to compete on an international stage?

As I reflect on my career, this is my third rotation as the CFO of a US company. Over that time period, I feel that the world has been getting smaller. Technology is allowing us to break down barriers, enabling individuals to contribute and have an impact at a scale that we have not seen before. For someone who aspires to find their role, therefore, I would offer the following advice. 

Firstly, focus on driving impact instead of waiting to be told what you should do, while looking for where you can make an impact and how to create that opportunity. 

Secondly, ensure that you build a network of mentors and sponsors around your company and your community, to ensure that you are being given advice. 

Thirdly, focus on the output and let the rewards follow. Perhaps that is a challenge in today’s more digitally native population – understanding that sometimes your contributions have to lead before financial rewards.