NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept 23 – Priscilla Muhiu, is the newly appointed General Manager Kenya, for the Spanish delivery firm Glovo.
Her appointment checked in early September, at a time when the company continued to witness increased demand owing to the coronavirus pandemic that has limited movement within the country.
In this interview, Priscilla takes us through her rise in her career, and how she plans to act in her new role. But first, we start by understanding who Priscilla is outside her job description and who she really is.
“Priscilla is a Mum, a mentor who is always looking for opportunities to mentor young people, I run a blog ((https://www.confessions-of-a-career-woman.com/) and I’m a lover of life. I speak some French (which is a plus for my job), English, Kiswahili & Kikuyu,” Priscilla said.
At 37, Priscilla says she is not pressured to rise in her career, the newly appointed Glovo Kenya boss says she is only competing with her yesterday self which she says is the most important bit of growth.
“I am a big believer in falling 7 times and standing up 8 times. I embrace the chaos that life presents, and I try to focus on the lessons learnt. I am not disappointed in myself; I appreciate every experience in my life and strive every day to be the best version of myself,” she added.
For Priscilla, leadership has been part and parcel of her growth. She previously worked as Head of Marketing at both Sendy and OLX.
Her new role means that she is taking over the whole business unit as opposed to just focusing on one function.
Glovo is currently operating in more than 20 countries, Priscilla says the culture in Glovo is amazing.
She considers that the most admirable thing about the delivery company is that people have a genuine concern for one another while still maintaining a very high-performance driven culture.
“It´s incredible how the Glovo values have been transmitted across all countries and I would not say there´s any country that is better than the other,” the 34-year-old said.
Glovo has currently been registering good performance due to limited movement to curb the spread of coronavirus disease.
During this period, Glovo saw cashless payments made by bank card increase by 50 percent and mobile payments by 14 percent in Kenya.
For Priscilla, this has been a learning experience being that she took over the country when the pandemic was ongoing.The leader has learnt to appreciate the importance of adapting very quickly and to be in line with what’s happening in the environment.
At the same time, Priscilla was also pushed to flex her muscles in learning the importance of being agile as a business and identifying opportunities that can help the business continue to grow.
Even as Kenya continues to relax the virus containment measures, Priscilla says the behavior of the “New consumer” will persist post the current situation.
Initially, the firm was skeptical about trying delivery services but now once they start getting used to the convenience of using the delivery service platform and trusting the platforms, they expect this behavior to continuepost the COVID period.
In her new role, Priscilla’s goal is to work with the team to increase their market share and as well as penetration, by making Glovo more affordable to more people.
The firm also plans to open more cities such as Eldoret, Kisumu, and many more cities in Kenya.
