The hardest part of growing a global company is not opening new markets. It is making sure people in those markets still feel they belong to the same organisation. That is the challenge Vera Solomatina is helping to solve as SVP of people and culture at inDrive.
As the company continues to expand across diverse countries and cultures, Vera’s focus is on building a people strategy that supports growth while protecting the values and ways of working that make the e-hailing business unique.
“A shared culture doesn’t mean everyone acts the same way. It means our six core values and our mission stay the same everywhere – the rest can look different from country to country. We’re firm on what doesn’t change and generous with everything else, so local teams can be themselves instead of copying a head-office style that doesn’t fit,” she says.
“My test is that you should move from one country to another and you should still recognise the same company, even if the day-to-day feels different. Get that right and you keep what’s shared without erasing what makes each place its own.”
Vera admits that many companies struggle with culture when growth accelerates. The very qualities that helped a business succeed in its early stages can become harder to maintain as teams expand and complexity increases.
“Organisations assume the culture that got them this far will carry over on its own, so they stop investing in it just when it’s under the most pressure. The other common mistake is exporting head-office habits as if they were values, confusing how things are done in one place with what the company actually believes.”
“We took the opposite approach and made culture a deliberate, strong part of how we grow something we invest in on purpose rather than hope survives the scaling. That’s what keeps teams in new markets feeling part of the same company, not managed from a distance. Good culture at speed is trust that works without constant oversight – people who can decide well on their own because they’re clear on the principles. The real test is whether they feel safe raising problems early.”
Driving results
Her approach is rooted in the belief that people decisions should not follow business decisions but they should help shape them.
“My role sits where people strategy and business strategy meet, and my job is to keep them as one conversation, not two that get reconciled later. In practice that means three things: bringing in the senior leaders who’ll shape our next stage of growth, keeping rewards fair and competitive across very different markets, and owning the systems and data that show us what's really happening with our people.”
“The point of all of it is business outcomes, scaling into new markets without losing what makes us work, keeping the people who drive results, and building a culture strong enough to hold a fast-moving, global company together. Done well, people’s strategy doesn’t support the business from the sidelines. It’s one of the things that decides whether the business succeeds.”
She explains how her belief in intentional culture has been shaped by some of the most difficult parts of her career: leading organisational change.
“The most defining challenges have been about embedding new practices and a new culture inside the company – introducing real performance management where it didn’t exist before, and shifting how people actually work and think, not just what the policy says. That kind of change is hard because it’s internal and personal: you’re asking colleagues to adopt new habits and standards while they're still attached to the old ones. What it taught me is that culture and performance practices don't change by announcement, they change through consistency.”
A data-driven approach
“You have to be clear about what ‘good’ looks like, calm under the inevitable resistance, and willing to repeat the message far longer than feels necessary. People can handle a higher bar; what they can’t handle is ambiguity about what's expected or the sense that it’s being imposed rather than explained.”
Alongside culture and transformation, Vera has focused on strengthening how inDrive uses data to make people decisions. One initiative she is particularly proud of is shifting conversations away from assumptions and towards evidence.
“Two initiatives at inDrive stand out. The first is bringing a data-driven approach to managing productivity, moving from opinion and gut feel to evidence, so we can actually see engagement trends, where reward is and isn’t competitive, and where productivity gaps are widening, and act on them early rather than after the fact,” she explains.
“The second is our inclusion work: building an environment where people from very different markets and backgrounds can do their best work and feel they genuinely belong, which for a company operating across dozens of countries isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a condition for performing at all.”
The qualities that shape Vera’s leadership are also developed in quieter moments away from work. Her creative side still surprises many who only know her as a senior HR executive responsible for talent, reward, culture and organisational transformation.
“I paint; watercolours in particular. It’s the one thing that fully switches off the analytical, always-on part of my brain because there’s no dashboard, no stakeholder, no decision to optimise, just colour and focus. It’s become my proper way to recharge, and I think everyone in a demanding role needs something like that: not another form of productivity, but something done purely for its own sake.”
Learning constantly
“I also play the piano. People tend to picture a senior HR leader as all spreadsheets and strategy, so they’re often surprised to learn there’s a musician in there too, and honestly, the discipline it takes to learn a piece properly isn’t so different from the patience good people work requires.”
A constant learner at heart, Vera studies foreign languages and keeps building her own HR knowledge. “The moment you think you’ve got people figured out is the moment you stop being useful at this.”
She also volunteers and provides career coaching, experiences that keep her connected to people’s real concerns about work and development.
“Raising my son keeps me honest about patience and the long view. You can’t shortcut development, in a child or in an organisation.”
Interestingly, development has always been a thread connecting the personal and professional parts of her life. It is also at the heart of why she moved from law into HR.
“What drew me into HR was that it let me keep using structured, precise thinking while working with people and with strategy rather than just documents. As for learning, most of mine has come from people rather than theory – from colleagues at every level, and especially from working closely with senior leaders, where you see how decisions really get made. But the biggest lessons have always come from leading change.”
“Driving real change inside a company teaches you fast what works and what doesn't, how much clarity people need, how much patience it takes, and how often you have to repeat the message before it lands. The legal training taught me to be precise; change taught me to be precise and humble.”
