Engineering the springboard for Natalie's success
"Now she’s an OX customer, she just calls up, books space on the truck and her bananas are transported for her. If anything makes me proud it is being able to make that difference. Many of our customers are reporting a ten-times growth in income and that is life-changing.”
Natalie Dowsett would encourage all young women to consider engineering as a career – for the satisfaction it brings, for the people you meet and not least for the amazing opportunities it opens up.
The engineering sector is a very broad spectrum in itself, offering copious and diverse openings. It is also, as Natalie has proved, a great foundation for building a business career.
Last month, Natalie collected a prestigious ‘Autocar Great Women Award’ for her work as co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of OX Delivers, in Leamington Spa.
From their base at Squab Hall, off Harbury Lane in the heart of the Warwickshire countryside, OX Delivers serves a customer-base entirely in Rwanda, East Africa. Many people there who are living in poverty and without transport which makes making a living, mostly as farmers, incredibly difficult.
OX Delivers’ team in Rwanda run electric trucks to provide transport-as-a-service meaning customers pay only for the space they need, by the kilo and kilometre. Few people there have the money to buy a vehicle, but transport services are desperately needed. This simple, brilliant idea is making a real difference - and will soon be making an even bigger one. OX Delivers has signed a $125million deal for over 2,500 trucks to be deployed in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania.
All this was built by Natalie and co-founder Simon Davis…and rooted in her love for, and training in engineering.
“I am now a Chief Operating Officer but I started as an engineer and that’s what opened all these doors for me,” she said. “That is how I gained the knowledge to enable me to do this.
“I had wanted to be an automotive engineer since I was 11. As a family we went to the Le Mans 24-hour race every year and that got me into cars and, in particular, the design of cars. Since then I’ve been very fortunate to have some great opportunities and meet some great people and I’m very passionate about supporting other women coming into engineering. Attracting women into the sector is a very powerful and important topic. We live in a complex world and it needs a lot of diverse and strong minds to deal with those complexities. That’s how we will get solutions.”
Natalie’s fascination with finding solutions was fuelled by a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Salford. Next came another great learning environment - a graduate scheme at Jaguar Land Rover which brought her to Warwickshire.
“I was in package engineering, which is focused on optimising the design for occupants and cargo within the constraints of design and systems. The package engineers find the solutions to make the vehicle attractive to a customer and meet regulations and requirements.
“I enjoyed that, then transferred to product planning which I also really enjoyed. That meant I’d worked on the product life cycle at the start and in the middle so wanted to see what it’s like at the end, so I joined the PR department to be part of launching products into the world. Again, I had a fantastic time there, but then I had my children. And at that point everything took a different perspective.”
And at that point the seed of Natalie’s African adventure was sown.
“I wanted to be part of something where success isn’t just about sales,” she said. “I wanted success to be about impact. So I left JLR and an ex-colleague asked me for help with an event he was setting up for a concept vehicle called OX, which was part of the Global Vehicle Trust, a not-for-profit business. They had commissioned a design for a vehicle that answered the problem of having so few fit-for-purpose vehicles in rural Africa. They had a design but no route to access very price-sensitive customers. No matter how cheap they made it, it was still too expensive for farmers there to buy or hire.
“So we spent COVID lockdown developing the route to market. We used the Uber/AirB&B mantra of ownership doesn’t need to be king - the customer only pays for what they need for as long as they need it.
“We realised the truck needed to be electric and to be a commercial venture because it required investment and wasn’t viable as a not-for-profit business. We redeveloped it and the truck today is in its fourth generation of design. The whole design journey has been fully informed by the market because we started a pilot scheme in 2021 in Rwanda to gather data.
“The business has evolved a long way since then and it is very exciting to have signed a deal for thousands more trucks. It is exciting for all the benefit they will bring but what makes me most proud is not the numbers but the impact on each individual customer.
“I met a banana trader who had a market stall and had to go to the wholesaler on the bus to get her bananas, but couldn’t get the bus back with all stock, so she had to hitch a lift which could take two or three days. She would be away from her children for three nights then sell the bananas and do it all again. Now she’s an OX customer, she just calls up, books space on the truck and her bananas are transported for her. If anything makes me proud it is being able to make that difference. Many of our customers are reporting a ten-times growth in income and that is life-changing.”
Natalie and OX delivers are another great example of a small Warwickshire business wielding a giant impact overseas. The business employs 40 in Leamington and a growing team in Rwanda, and is soon to expand into bigger premises at Squab Hall as they step up production.
“Where else in the UK would you start a truck-manufacturing operation than Warwickshire with all the resource and skills and knowledge. This is just the right place and great for recruitment and Warwickshire County Council has been brilliant in introducing us to lots of people. Ian Flynn from the Inward Investment team is the person who will connect you to so many people which makes a big difference.”