Over the last year, Airlift has welcomed a diverse pool of new teammates to join our effort in building Airlift Express, a 30-minute delivery service for all household essentials. Our foray into delivery is part of a larger mission of building a world in which self-empowerment is the norm, and not the exception.

For consumers, Airlift Express serves as a means of self-empowerment, a way to have all household essentials delivered within 30 minutes without having to rely on other people or circumstances. For drivers, our platform becomes a means of their daily livelihood, enabling them to work on a flexible schedule based on their needs. For manufacturers and small businesses, Airlift serves as a distribution platform, the rails through which consumer goods move from manufacturers to customers. 

Our team comes together behind this common mission, tying what we do on a daily basis with a broader objective of seeing change in the region. Our mission is not unique; what, then, defines the Airlift experience for teammates operating relentlessly across different roles and locations? What makes the overall Airlift experience truly unique?

While our team is doing many things differently, the theme that truly stands out above all else is the perceived joy of building a high-impact, hyper-growth consumer product for local populations. Let us unpack this admittedly heavy statement.

At its core, Airlift is a team of builders looking to create impact. We all own what we’re building. For our engineering squad, this offers the unique opportunity to be the engineer and the client — our engineers write code, ship features, talk to the users on the front-lines and gain first-hand visibility into the impact of what they build, reporting back the bugs that creep in along the way.

A big part of the Airlift experience is grounded in the excitement that stems from building a consumer product (as opposed to, for instance, a B2B product). The thrill of building something that your friends, family, neighbours and loved ones use and enjoy daily is unparalleled. The social relevance of the product makes day-to-day life at Airlift all the more meaningful. Seeing Airlift riders deliver essentials around neighbourhoods, feeling ownership of the product and recognizing one’s part in making it all come together is a moment that makes us feel proud and humbled.

For full disclosure, the thrill of serving one’s friends and family also comes with them calling one personally (rather than the customer helpline) every time the platform has sold out potatoes or bread. As owners of the product, all teammates (supply chain specialists or not) are eligible to receive these calls from friends and family. This, too, is perhaps unique to Airlift and is called for since our teammates across the board engage in customer outreach to make calls, gather first-hand feedback and identify how to serve our customers better.

Perhaps the most exciting part though is the war-room intensity that comes with building a consumer product that has live orders, customers waiting and that is growing in demand at a hyper-velocity across cities. With these two factors combined, when things break (and they necessarily do when you’re constantly innovating and rolling out new features at high velocity), the result is exciting challenges that must be resolved on a war footing. This often results in our teammates going out to deliver orders personally and coming back with adventure stories that bring us all laughs and fond memories. 

This war-room intensity means that there is no “average” day at Airlift — we see new challenges and jump in to solve them as one would in an exciting video-game that requires quick re-strategizing and innovation to get ahead of roadblocks.

All this coupled with the fact that Airlift is a Pakistan-born company building for the Pakistani local population makes it that much more meaningful and special. What makes the Airlift experience truly unique then? It is the experience of building a consumer product and personally witnessing its positive impact across thousands of individuals, including our own loved ones. 

At Airlift, we are just getting started on our larger mission. We are excited to meet those who are yet to join us on this journey, who are looking to build and experience this unique Airlift experience for themselves. If you’re determined to build the future, we want to hear from you — please feel free to reach out through https://www.airlifttech.com/career/.

Let’s build something huge, together.