Sandeep Shetty and the value of starting again

Sandeep Shetty could afford to stop. After Careem’s sale to Uber, he had the financial freedom to choose his work. He considered taking a break. Instead, he joined NorthLadder as co-founder and chief executive, turning his attention from journeys across a city to the remaining value of things people already owned.

There is a pleasing lack of ceremony in the object at the centre of this second act. An old phone does not announce itself as an entrepreneurial opportunity. It lies in a drawer, usually accompanied by a cable belonging to something else. The owner has moved on. The device may have considerably more life left in it.

Shetty’s work begins with that gap between usefulness and neglect. What happens when the owner wants to sell? Who arrives at the price? How many possible buyers get a say? These are modest questions with a great deal of machinery behind them. NorthLadder has become his attempt to organise that machinery.

The freedom to choose another problem

Shetty’s early working life followed an educational route through engineering and an MBA. His first job, in 1999, was a strategy role at HSBC. Later came GE Capital/Genpact, McKinsey and the launch of an Emirates NBD subsidiary. He joined Careem in 2017, before the sale that changed his financial circumstances.

He has described his spending as prudent and his career choices as more adventurous. It is a useful distinction. Keeping personal expenses manageable leaves room to take a different job, accept a smaller salary or begin again. In his telling, money widened the range of work he could choose.

“My timing was right.”

Sandeep Shetty, reflecting on joining Careem

The admission makes room for luck in a story that could easily become a procession of job titles. A career can be carefully considered and still depend on when an opportunity appears. The interesting question is what someone does with the opportunity after it has paid off.

An unexpected turn at the recruiting table

BECO Capital’s encounter with Shetty had a different destination in mind. The investors met him after he had led Careem’s largest business unit and initially wanted to recruit him for another portfolio company. He became NorthLadder’s co-founder and CEO instead. BECO backed him.

That small detour is more revealing than a tidy founding legend. Businesses collect people through conversations, introductions and changed plans. An investor can arrive with one vacancy and leave with a different investment. Shetty’s next role grew out of an existing early-stage company rather than a neatly staged revelation.

Alongside co-founder and chief operating officer Mihin Shah, he helped turn NorthLadder’s initial consumer-lending concept into a business providing infrastructure for the secondhand phone market. The pivot changed the customer relationship: the company would help other businesses run the process of buying and moving used devices.

A pivot also changes the kind of competence a founder needs to demonstrate. An attractive consumer proposition is one problem. Making a retailer’s trade-in programme work day after day is another. It requires reliability in places a shopper may never see. Shetty had chosen work in which the backstage arrangements mattered.

A drawer is a very small marketplace

In 2021, NorthLadder’s proposition was broader than the phone business it is known for today. Shetty described a secondhand marketplace covering electronics and luxury assets, with authentication, logistics and payment handled as part of the service. The auction gave buyers from different markets an opportunity to bid.

The appeal was easy to understand. Selling something used often asks its owner to become an amateur merchant: find a buyer, evaluate an offer, arrange a handover. A managed auction proposes to take those chores off the seller’s hands while letting more buyers compete for the item.

In his telecom discussions that year, Shetty focused on smartphones, laptops, tablets and smartwatches. He said more than 150 dealers across the UAE participated in the platform’s auctions. He also connected trade-in to the upgrade cycle accompanying the transition to 5G.

The logic links two purchases separated by time. A phone bought years ago can contribute to the cost of the next one. Its owner benefits from recovering some value; the next owner gets a device with another useful chapter ahead. The auction sits between them, making demand visible at the point of exchange.

The price is only the beginning

By May 2022, NorthLadder had raised $10 million through convertible notes and venture capital financing. The plans included strengthening the technology platform, expanding geographically and deepening business partnerships. Shetty spoke of affordability through trade-ins as an enabler of new device sales.

That description gives the retailer a reason to care beyond the used device itself. Trade-in can influence whether a customer can afford the next purchase. The quotation for an old phone becomes part of the conversation about a new one. A service that feels peripheral can enter the middle of the sale.

The work also brings software into contact with a physical object whose condition matters. A device must be assessed before its price means much. Partners need procedures that staff can follow. Buyers need confidence in what they are buying. Convenience is a promise that must survive the handover.

A 2024 partnership with Piceasoft addressed part of this practical challenge. Piceasoft supplies technology for mobile-device lifecycle services. Shetty described simplicity and transparency as critical to making those services work, with the partnership intended to make responsible choices easier for consumers while preserving value for money.

For Shetty, the Piceasoft relationship made the consumer’s effort part of the business discussion. A service can offer value and still ask too much of its user. Simpler trade-in is therefore connected to the supply of used devices: the owner must decide to participate before any buyer can bid. His comments about the partnership put the easy customer experience alongside the commercial opportunity, rather than leaving it as a finishing touch.

This is where his background as an operator becomes relevant. Running a marketplace means arranging the conditions in which strangers can transact. A working interface helps, but so does a completed collection, a credible assessment and a clear explanation when something changes. The small details eventually decide whether the larger proposition earns another customer.

Two Mumbai careers meet in Dubai

Shetty and Shah were both born and raised in Mumbai. They met as consultants at McKinsey’s Dubai office. Before NorthLadder, Shetty led Careem’s core ride-hailing business as managing director; Shah spent seven years at Landmark Group, including five as chief supply chain officer.

Their partnership brings together experience with demand and the movement of goods. Those are useful neighbours in a trade-in business. Finding a buyer is one task. Making sure the device reaches the right place is another. A price on a screen has to become a transaction in the world.

In June 2025, the pair were selected as Endeavor Entrepreneurs at the organisation’s International Selection Panel in Warsaw. The panel ran from June 23 to 25 and selected 21 entrepreneurs leading 14 companies. NorthLadder joined through Endeavor’s UAE office.

The selection offers a public marker of the company’s progress without making the partnership sound inevitable. These were two careers that met at a consulting firm, then gathered different operating experiences before coming together in the used-device business. The history is more interesting with those separate chapters intact.

A second life, with the numbers visible

NorthLadder’s 2024 Series B brought another $10 million, led by stc Group’s tali ventures with participation from Dutch Founders Fund and CE-Ventures. European expansion and platform development were central uses for the capital. The company had established European operations in Amsterdam.

The European chapter also involved acquiring Renewd in 2024. Shetty described the Netherlands-based business as a provider of pre-owned devices sold through telecom, retail and e-commerce channels. Bringing that capability into NorthLadder extended the company’s work towards resale. His explanation emphasised the combination of trade-in technology and a team already experienced in Europe. Expansion, in this case, meant adding people and a business with an existing place in the market.

At MWC Barcelona in 2025, Shetty described the growing interest of operators and retailers in controlling more of the device lifecycle. His argument connected access to multiple buyers with access to assessment technologies and different customer journeys. Partners, in this view, should have choices about how a programme is run.

Shetty’s examples at Barcelona made control concrete. A partner might want to keep some traded-in devices for sale through its own channels. It might want different assessment tools, refurbishment partners or ways of serving customers online and in stores. His ambition was to handle the complexity on the partner’s behalf. That is a demanding promise: more choice for the retailer, without requiring the retailer to coordinate every participant itself.

Later that year, he challenged long-term arrangements with a single trade-in vendor, arguing that they could leave retailers with limited visibility and bargaining power. He said NorthLadder had seen retailers obtain 20% to 30% better trade-in values through buyer competition. That is his reported experience, rather than a promise for every device.

“We facilitate, but we don’t control.”

Sandeep Shetty, on the marketplace model

His proposed extension was a marketplace spanning more stages, including refurbishment and resale. In October 2025 he described those additions as plans for the following 12 months. The distinction matters: a direction of travel says something about a founder’s ambitions without turning the future into an accomplished fact.

There is an ordinary test for this rather elaborate business. Someone has a phone they no longer need. Can they get a price they understand, complete the handover and feel the effort was worthwhile? Shetty’s career now runs through that sequence. The next beginning belongs to the device as well as the founder.