In his new role as country manager for Kazakhstan, Aray Bekembayev is responsible for looking after all business verticals, as well as overseeing local government and public relations, partnerships, and inVision initiatives. We spoke to him about this new role and the challenges facing him as country manager; exciting new developments coming up for Kazakhstan; and life outside work.

Why did you decide to take on this role? I joined inDrive in 2020. I decided to take on the country manager role because it was a next step for me, to drive my growth. The country management role is something new, so it was a challenge to dive into this unknown, sort everything out, structure it; to diagnose the good, the bad and the ugly. To understand what are the quick wins, and what are not; what resources are needed to make things better.

I took it, because I needed a challenge to prove to myself that I’m not resting in one place.

Kazakhstan is a specific market. It has a lot of local fine-tuning to be done. The specific needs include enhancing our GR position; how we are viewed and treated by government agencies and authorities. Of course, the competitive pricing model is a priority for operations. We need to be always striving for a better pricing model that is not only competitive, but also fair to our users. I think it's one of the hardest things to do, to be honest. And of course ensuring reliable and high quality service that is both fast and safe.

There are very exciting developments coming. We are planning to introduce more convenient ways to pay for a ride.

The next thing will be to completely revise the comfort class order in the application. It’s something that many have been waiting for.

And we're working on an internal navigation system … We have agreed with our partner, a geo maps provider, to have this seamless API integration that will help our drivers.

In the long term, we’re focusing on expanding our user base, because the resources we are able to save through smart investing, smart spending we will be able to invest into new services, new products, enhancing existing products and services, getting the most out of what we are not utilizing at the moment.

inVision is a very important project, not only for Kazakhstan but globally. It's part of our broader mission to positively impact 1 billion people by 2030 – whatever we do in our business should be helpful to our community; it should bring justice and fairness. So inVision is a set of projects we are implementing to further challenge injustice in different areas, including sports, education, entrepreneurship, and now in the cultural space with the Alternativa Film Awards.

In Kazakhstan we have done a lot of work in this area, and I try to support the inVision team. We use every opportunity to bring this message to the public, to the communities, to government authorities about the work we're doing. This is our way of giving back to the community and following our mission not only in mobility and ride-hailing, but in other areas as well.

One surprising fact about me: I’m a really good ping pong player. I can match pretty good champions, but I've never played professionally. We had a ping pong table in our neighborhood … so I was playing ping pong most of the time.

Outside of work I do a lot of walking (not hiking, walking). It keeps my mind clear. Sometimes when walking is not enough, I go running. And then reading about technical updates like news, technical digests; I like everything about gadgets and new technology. And of course, spending time with family.

A good book I recently read: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund.

I was advised to read it by my previous manager. It’s about how things in the world really are, and how you should view the world as it is, based on facts. It’s a long read, but a really good one.

Favorite motivational saying: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill.

In our world we have so many different things coming up, every day, every hour. Some of them are worse, some better than the best you knew before. You should always keep your mind open and whenever you achieve something, try to do a bit better – you can do it, it's never the final form, you can do a better form.

And the same thing with problems, those issues are not the last issues you will face, there will be other ones. So try to work with this one and just keep going.

What non-work-related achievement are you most proud of? I have a close circle that I have been friends with from childhood; we grew up together, we went to school together, I went to university with a few of them. We live in different cities, but we still are very friendly. I'm really proud to be able to build these kinds of relationships that are long lasting, sustainable and they’re not impacted by things that happen along the way.

What do you think it takes to form those kinds of friendships? I think integrity, honesty and loyalty. And compassion.

What skill would you like to learn next? I would be interested in learning more about AI. I haven't really been using it, even though it is very popular and there are so many instruments.

How do you achieve work/life balance? You have to prioritize.

And then, if we're talking about team management and human resources, you have to delegate – and not just because you want to take your load off. But you have to delegate effectively.

And have some portion of time during the day for your family. Try to make those portions more frequent and long-lasting, and then you will not regret lost time when your kids grow up. You can be part of the process, you just have to find time and delegate things.

Any tips for how to delegate effectively? First off, you have to understand the core value behind every task, because sometimes the tasks are set in a very broad way. Leaders are there to analyze first, to pull a task into pieces, and understand which pieces are more important and which piece should go to which person. Leaders should understand the strengths and weaknesses of their teams.

So I try to first analyze a task, understand who can do what, and who can do what better, and then based on that, delegate.

My impressions so far are very positive, overall. It's important that the company has a very strong vision and that support from the CEO and the highest management is felt; it helps throughout the different situations we have. I think that we have a lot of opportunities for growth and for unleashing the potential of this local market; because for the past few years we have been doing a lot of market expansion and a lot of global work, and now we are narrowing our focus to specific markets and local fine-tuning.