In a recent episode of Arabian Business’ AB Majlis podcast, Bassel Al Nahlaoui, Managing Director at Careem, shared insights into the company’s journey from a ride-hailing app to a multi-service platform.
The discussion highlighted Careem’s rapid growth, innovative approaches, and the crucial role of partnerships in its success.
Al Nahlaoui emphasised the importance of collaborations in Careem’s growth story, particularly noting the significance of both private sector and government partnerships.
“We strongly believe you cannot do everything yourself, especially as you expand and grow, it just becomes too, you get spread too thinly,” he explained.
A key partnership highlighted was with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Al Nahlaoui stated, “AWS is the foundation that we built Careem on that gives us reliability, security, to be reliable to our customers, be able to build the technology we’re building on a daily basis to customers.”
The company’s approach to government relations has been particularly noteworthy.
“We decided to work with governments versus butt head with governments,” Al Nahlaoui said.
“We’re here to improve things, we’re here to simplify and improve the lives of customers. And usually that’s so similar to what the goals of governments are.”
One prominent example of this collaborative approach is Hala, a joint venture with Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA). He proudly noted that it was “the first of its kind in the world.”
“There was never a government entity that has partnered with a private sector ride-hailing business.”
Careem’s rapid expansion and diversification
From its beginnings as a ride-hailing service, Careem has rapidly expanded its offerings.
Al Nahlaoui explained the company’s approach. “Our goal is constantly to simplify people’s life. That’s why we went from ride-hailing to food, to groceries, to payments, to bikes, and so on.”
This expansion has led to some novel services, including the much-talked-about sacrificial goat delivery during Eid Al Adha. He revealed the rapid development of this service took only four days from inception to execution. Multiple teams came together over a weekend to launch the service by Monday morning.
The ‘secret sauce’ to becoming a unicorn
When asked about Careem’s ‘secret sauce’ for success, Al Nahlaoui outlined three key ingredients.
- Value creation: “What value are you creating for the customer that’s using it? That’s the customer and the captain and the merchant, everyone needs to get some value in return for them to use something, anything, right?”
- Dependability: “Okay, you solve a problem, you can’t do it one out of 10 tries, you got to do it over and over and over at scale.”
- Care and support: “Things will break. There’s no way around it. I will never guarantee you that processes will not break. Now, how do you win back that customer? How do you solve their problem?”
He stressed the importance of continuous improvement in these areas to stay ahead of the competition.
Social impact
Beyond its business success, Careem has had a significant social impact. Al Nahlaoui shared a powerful anecdote about how Careem has changed social dynamics in Saudi Arabia, particularly for women.
“Pre-Careem, there is no world where a stranger Saudi woman would get into a car with me for me to drop her off somewhere,” a Saudi captain told him. This change has enabled more women to secure jobs by providing reliable transportation.
Looking to the future, Al Nahlaoui hinted at exciting developments in AI-driven personalisation and a new feature in their Dineout service. “Keep an eye out on Dineout. It’s probably one of our first pilots of real AI interaction with the customer,” he teased.
As Careem continues to expand and innovate, he remains focused on the company’s underlying social impact mission.
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