Author: Careem Online_News

Peter Minev – Careem’s Director of Engineering

Careem Berlin is home to one of our engineering facilities where a team of over 100 work on developing and improving Careem’s tech capabilities. Careem’s Director of Engineering is Peter Minev…

How did you reach your current position at Careem Berlin?
In 2015 I was simultaneously running engineering teams in Sofia, the Silicon Valley and India. A former colleague of mine from our office in the USA – an extraordinary talent from Stanford – got in touch and said he’d taken a new challenge – to build the entire engineering organisation of Careem. He offered me the opportunity to establish and head the engineering office in Berlin.

The challenge in front of the whole engineering organisation of Careem at that time was that there were a lot of high-quality engineers in the Middle East, but their number was not sufficient for the needs of such a fast-developing technological company. I faced the task to create a big office in a medium, which was new for me.

Why does Careem have an enginee..

Careem secures first close of US$500 million investment round

Led by existing investors, including Al Tayyar Group, Kingdom Holding, Rakuten and STV.
US$200 million is the first close of the US$500 million Series F round of investment.
Funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of Careem’s internet platform across the region.

Careem, the leading internet platform for the greater Middle East, has secured US$200 million from existing investors in the first close of a new fundraise expected to exceed US$500 million. Through this funding, Careem will accelerate its mission of simplifying the lives of people in the region by expanding into mass transportation, deliveries, and payments.

Mudassir Sheikha, CEO and co-founder of Careem said: “Internet-enabled services are having a profound and positive impact on our region, where the consumer internet opportunity is huge and untapped. As a platform with 30 million users and presence in 120+ cities, Careem is uniquely positioned to tap into this opportunity by expanding into new verticals. We are del..

Careem Muscat launches new service in partnership with Marhaba Taxi

From today, Careem Muscat customers will be able to book the “GO+” car type on the Careem app to order an on-demand taxi.

Careem will handle all elements of the service, from matching the customer to their ride, to dispatching taxis, to customer service, payment and marketing. The new service offers on-demand rides that are priced in line with the regular local taxis

The launch of this new service completes Careem’s footprint across the GCC and we are now the only ride-hailing operator to offer a service across all six GCC countries. It’s now the 15th country overall in which Careem operates.

This new service will be priced in line with general Marhaba Taxi rates in Oman and no additional fees will be applied, with OMR1.25 as the starting rate for fares. Careem’s platform provides transparent pricing for customers and Captains, helping to bring about a new standardisation of taxi fares in Muscat.

Having briefly launched a service in May 2017, Careem was asked by the Government of O..

Careem now offers employees unlimited vacation – here’s why

Unlimited vacation – sounds too good to be true, right?

But at Careem we believe that rest and recuperation are crucial to our health and well-being, and Careem is a busy, exciting and challenging place to work – we know how much everyone gives in pursuit of our purpose. Therefore, we want to make sure that our people take breaks to refresh and recharge, so we’ve adopted an unlimited vacation policy.

In other words, Careem colleagues can take as many vacation days as they like each year.

We also trust those colleagues to take ownership and responsibility, which means we don’t need to mandate work/life balance. We want everyone to feel empowered to make decisions that are in their own best interests and the interests of Careem and we trust our colleagues to manage their tasks and projects.

This policy is built on a foundation of trust and we want our teams to feel like they can take leave when they like, for as long as they like. We’re not the first company to do this, but it’s stil..

Careem has acquired Commut, the bus-shuttle service app

Careem has acquired Commut, the Hyderabad-based mass transportation app.

As the region’s only tech unicorn, we are always looking to invest in new technologies and high-calibre people to help solve complex local problems. And mass transportation is one of the biggest issues facing cities in the Greater Middle East.

Improving the quality and availability of mass transportation will help to create affordable transport options that can be a catalyst for moving cities forward, therefore we were interested in Commut.

Founded by six IIIT Hyderabad graduates, the tech-driven bus shuttle service that has been operating in Hyderabad since November 2015. To date, they’ve made over 750,000 trips within more than 100 existing routes and are the third-largest transportation app in India.

Backed by UK-Based Shell-Foundation and 50K Ventures, Commut served over 70,000 customers and onboarded 400 driver-partners. Now that Commut has joined Careem, their local operations – including its customers a..

Careem Captainahs receive first of 100 cars from Alwaleed…

Alwaleed Philanthropies has delivered the first cars of the 100 pledged to Careem Captainahs as part of its efforts to support and empower Saudi women to work.

The project aims to develop and invest in women’s talents and to enable them to gain meaningful employment and contribute to the development of society and the economy. One of the targets is to increase female participation in the labour force 22 percent to 30 percent.

Careem’s Captainahs began working on the platform on June 24, with more than 2,000 women having registered their interest to become a Captainah for Careem. The target for Careem is to have 20,000 Captainahs on the platform by 2020.

Chaired by HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Alwaleed Philanthropies has supported and spent more than four billion dollars on social welfare in the 40 years it has been operating. With over 1,000 projects initiated in 164 countries the charity has reached 533 million beneficiaries around the world, regardless of g..

An oral history of Careem’s launch

One of the things Careem aims to do is to inspire other tech start-ups in the region. So, we thought it might be nice to show that while Careem is now a large tech company, its origins were humble and in the very early days surprisingly low-tech. In their own words, the co-founders of Careem…

Magnus: After almost losing my life, I was looking for something to do that was meaningful and I bumped into Mudassir, an ex-colleague – we decided to create something meaningful and big together. We looked at healthcare and education and then the topic of transportation came up after it was mentioned as a problem area by some ex-colleagues at McKinsey. As a corporate client, it was a big pain to move around in the region – everything from having booked a car to having found a car, paying the guy, every part of the journey was challenging.

Mudassir: There was a problem with corporate transport and McKinsey was using a group of different providers in different markets and the reliability was low…

Careem now has one million Captains

Captains are the reason Careem works, and a major part of why Careem was started in the first place. Four years ago, we announced our target to have one million Captains on our platform by the end of 2018. Today we achieved that target one-quarter early.

When Careem was launched, one of the original motivations behind it was to do something that was big and meaningful. Now, six years later, one million people have joined and become Captains for Careem, gaining meaningful employment across the greater MENA region. There were a lot of people in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt who were not employed, or were under-employed, but now they have become productive members of society.

We’ve also launched in Palestine because we saw that there were a lot of lives there that could be improved, then in Iraq and most recently, in Sudan. We’re building a service that can improve the lives of people wherever it goes by giving them an income-generating opportunity as well as mobility.

W..

Why the Careem app is more than just a tool for ride hailing

You know the Careem app. And in the last six years at Careem we have built a large ride-hailing business, but what we’ve really built is a large Internet business.

Careem is a tech company first and foremost, and in the process of building the ride-hailing business we have created the ecosystem to help others build their own regional Internet business on our platform.

While launching Careem we developed and implemented a lot of the underlying infrastructure that was needed to run a consumer Internet business in multiple countries in the region, then harmonised them on a single platform. That wasn’t easy. But now we can do many more things than just mobility, and we are one of the few companies that have breadth of population and support in a large tech platform.

Our focus was mobility, all forms of things that can move people, but now we’re expanding to other aspects for which our app can provide a stable and far-reaching base.

Building an Internet business in the region is difficu..

How Careem’s growth is driving affordability and choice… and we…

Careem’s growth and the idea of what we provide can differ depending on who you are and where you live. For some people in a place like Dubai, Careem might be the Lexus you book to take you to the airport. In Egypt, it’s the motorbike you get when you need to beat the traffic and get across Cairo in a hurry. In Pakistan it’s the tuk tuk you use to get to work every day. We are, of course, all those things and more, but why we are all those things is the important part.

Our focus is on making our service affordable for the masses and helping to solve the transport issues that we’ve seen across all our markets. To do this we have been diversifying our vehicle types across all markets because the tech infrastructure we have built can support multiple vehicle types.

It started with cars. For example, when we first launched in Cairo, we did so with just ten cars which, in hindsight, is ridiculously few for a city that large. Someone would open the app and it said you’ll get a car in 90 mi..