Deliveroo has appointed Vasilis Hadjiaslanis as General Manager for the Middle East, the company announced on 6 October, putting a regional operator with a decade in ride-hailing and delivery platforms in charge of one of its strongest performing territories.
Hadjiaslanis joins from Bolt, where he was general manager in the United Arab Emirates, and before that spent more than seven years at Uber across the Middle East and Africa. He takes the Middle East role at a point when the business is being folded into a much larger parent, and he will work with the international teams of DoorDash, which completed its acquisition of Deliveroo last year. Miki Kuusi, chief executive of DoorDash International, is quoted in the announcement.
Deliveroo has operated in the United Arab Emirates since 2015 and in Kuwait since 2019, and says it passed 100 million cumulative orders in the region last year. The Middle East has been among the more profitable parts of the group's footprint, with high urban density, high smartphone penetration and a restaurant sector that adopted delivery earlier and more completely than most European markets.
The appointment is the third change in the regional leadership in recent years, following Anis Harb and then Nick Price in the same seat. Frequent turnover at general manager level is common across delivery platforms in the Gulf, where the competitive set includes well-funded regional players and where market share can move quickly on pricing and rider supply rather than on product.
The integration context is what makes this a harder job than the title suggests. A regional general manager inside an acquired business has to deliver local growth while absorbing a new owner's systems, reporting lines and capital discipline, and the Middle East operation now sits inside a group whose centre of gravity is in North America. Hadjiaslanis arrives with no prior history at either company, which cuts both ways: no inherited loyalties, but also no established credit with the teams on either side of the integration.
His background is the clearest signal of intent. Both of his previous employers built regional businesses on supply-side operations, driver and rider economics and city-by-city launch discipline rather than on brand marketing or on restaurant partnerships. Hiring from that school, rather than from retail or from within the group, suggests the priority for the region is operational margin and rider network efficiency as the integration proceeds, in a market where the cost of fulfilling an order has become the number that separates the platforms that last from the ones that are bought or closed.
