Olsson is responsible for much of the disruption to the UAE’s taxi industry. He and Mudassir Sheikha quit their corporate jobs in 2012 to launch the ride-hailing app Careem and are now sitting on a firm worth an estimated $1bn.
The Swede met success at a young age. At just 15 he started an IT consultancy company and then went on to study at top universities including Lund University, Harvard, Yale, and Sorbonne. But after five years with McKinsey in the UAE, he suffered a brain aneurysm that made him reconsider his career.
That led to Careem, which now operates in 44 cities in ten countries across the MENA region, with 100,000 drivers, and 6 million registered users.
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