Ashik Ahmed, co-founder, Deputy
Five years after starting his first job out of uni, Ashik Ahmed co-founded a completely different business, with his boss.
Steve Shelley recruited Melbourne University computer science graduate Ashik Ahmed for AeroCare, the aviation ground services business he had grown to the point where organising his employees was burning him out. Freshly minted software engineer Ahmed was tasked with building an in-house staff-management system to alleviate the pain of the staff juggle.
“It was 2003, before the evolution of mobile and cloud computing,” says Ahmed. Nevertheless, he built an in-house rostering, pay and performance-management system that transformed Aerocare’s business.
“Over the next three years we grew the business seven times, without additional head-office admin or IT staff,” says Ahmed. Shelley sold AeroCare and proposed to Ahmed that they join forces to take what Shelley calls “these beautiful systems” to the rest of the world.
Just shy of a decade later, Deputy – the name pitches it as a business owner’s trusty 2IC – has more than 80,000 customers, including Qantas, Amazon, Nike and NASA, in more than 80 countries.
“Steve was very kind in giving me the opportunity,” says Ahmed. “Working with him in the aviation industry and being able to solve things in that complex business allowed us to build Deputy to work for any business … from aviation to eCommerce, government, retail or a cafe.”
A 2017 capital raising attracted $US25 million ($33 million) from US-based venture capital firm OpenView, and the Sydney-headquartered Deputy now has offices in Atlanta and London. The investors suggested that co-founder and CTO Ahmed should consider becoming CEO too. While at first unsure about making the leap, he now quotes Seek co-founder Paul Bassat: “Hunger trumps experience.”
“Everybody in the business uses Deputy, not just one department, so there’s complete visibility,” says Ahmed of the app-based system. Prices start at $2 per user per month for scheduling only, or $4 for the premium model, including payroll exporting and attendance tracking, and customisable enterprise solutions for large companies. Deputy integrates with more than 35 payroll systems, including Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks. Early on, reveals Ahmed, they intended to include payroll but decided that the jurisdictional tangle would thwart their ambitions to be a global company. Workplace laws and awards for many countries can be applied from a library that is constantly being added to, or configured in the back end.
“Sixty per cent of the working population in the western world is hourly paid, and so many people are dealing with it on Excel, on paper or with in-house solutions that aren’t handling it very well,” says Ahmed. With Deputy, “the same product runs a small coffee shop or Qantas, but it’s configurable and scaleable – and we have a lot of AI capability, so it builds the schedule knowing the complexities of the team and you can view your wages bill for the week before publishing your schedule.”
As Deputy builds a roster, it automatically checks things such as correct qualifications, clashing shifts, a shift too close to the end of the previous one, annual leave or requests not to work. If a worker constantly swaps a Saturday shift, it stops assigning that shift to that worker. It communicates changes through the app (no more frantic ring-arounds when someone calls in sick), and can even plug into the weather forecast and alert the owner of an outdoor cafe that they may want to reduce their staff numbers on a stormy Saturday.
Ahmed says Deputy customers report saving at least 10 per cent on their wages bill and “we’ve freed them from the mundane task of organising shift workers and they can invest their time and money into growing their business”.
Since starting work with Shelley almost 15 years ago, he has married and now has two kids. “In those early years when we didn’t have customers my wife supported me,” he says. “She’s probably my biggest investor through this. It’s hard growing a business but spending time with my family is validation for all that work.”
