Welcoming Bird’s Ex-VP Operations Chandra Morando
Today I’m excited to share that Chandra Morando is joining Kyte as our first Chief Operating Officer, where she will oversee all operations, partnerships, expansion, and the rapidly growing list of markets.
Kyte is at a turning point of maturing from a niche product, to emerging as a global leader in the Car-as-a-Service market. With over a decade in the automotive and transportation industry, no individual is better equipped to help lead Kyte into this new era than Chandra’s unique combination of experience ranging from the biggest fleet management company on the planet to the notoriously fastest growing startup of all time. Rarely does an executive cover the breadth of operating experience in the real world and the strategic acumen to grow complex operations into a multi billion dollar P&L. Chandra impresses all who have the pleasure of working with and for her; she’s built an impressive following, and has proven herself as an authentic, kind, principled and relentless leader in the ever-changing and challenging transportation industry.
Before joining Kyte, Chandra led the North America Operations for Bird Technology, a pioneer in personal mobility and the notoriously fastest growing technology startup at the time with an asset-heavy, operationally-complex model and a ridiculously ambitious mission. As part of the predominantly Ex-Uber executive team, she led her team of well over 200 operators into an aggressive North American expansion and through an uncertain peak-pandemic environment with maximum speed and execution focus - lessons that Chandra will carry to further accelerate Kyte’s expansion plans.
Prior to Bird, Chandra led bikeshare giant OFO’s expansion into the Western Region, fueled by their Alibaba-led $866m Series E.
Prior to that, Chandra helped establish Zipcar for half a decade as the leading car sharing player at the time - where she led the Pacific NorthWest as Regional General Manager. Zipcar, founded in 2000, was ahead of their time as they provided a growing population of urban dwellers with a transportation option that, at the time, was a better way to access cars and helped make cities better places to live, further fueling Chandra’s passion for solving urban transportation.
Chandra gained early operating experience in the transportation industry at Enterprise Holdings - the biggest fleet management company in the world. With a fleet of well over 1,700,000 cars and over $22 billion revenue in fiscal year 2020, Enterprise showed that a well diversified car business in local markets can be profitable and thrive, despite their arms-length approach to technology and innovation.
“I’ve dedicated most of my career to providing people with better ways of moving around their cities while reducing the burden of personal car ownership, and removing vehicles from our overly congested urban centers. I could not be more excited to continue this mission with the talented team at Kyte, as we give people the easiest way to get a car when they need one. The Kyte experience is unlike any other, and I cannot wait to bring it to more people in more cities.
Chandra is joining us during a critical time in the company growth trajectory where we’ve reached an inflection point. In the past 12 months, Kyte grew well over 1,000% as more people are prioritizing car services over car ownership, despite a largely depressed transportation and Car-as-a-Service market that separated the wheat from the chaff.
As our North American markets are emerging from the pandemic, the way is cleared for Kyte to expand aggressively and, for the first time since inception, capitalize on the tailwinds caused by pent-up demand and an auto market that’s been dramatically impacted by global supply chain disruptions. We further strengthen our unit economics, and accelerate our growth into more markets across North America, while Chandra will help us mature as a company, further solidify our operations, and absorb the complexity of rapid expansion as we capitalize on the massive opportunity ahead of us.
As a strong and experienced executive and the second woman to join Kyte’s leadership team, Chandra will help further drive our agenda of diversity and inclusion and help attract diverse ‘A+’ talent to join Kyte’s mission.
By making it surprisingly easy to get a car, Kyte is giving people better access to fewer cars. With our relentless commitment to customer centricity, technology-powered operational excellence, and capital efficiency, we’re transforming the way people access transportation in growing, dense urban environments. After becoming the fastest growing company in the Car-as-a-Service space and positively impacting tens of thousands of urban dwellers across North America, we’re still recognizing we are at day 1 of the journey ahead of us.
Kyte is growing - if you’re interested in giving more people access to fewer cars, we’re hiring across every department. See here for more info.