Careem: Affordable ride-hailing

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY

Driving innovation in urban mobility

Before Careem, the two most prevalent e-hail solutions in the market were Uber and Lyft. The problem with these was, they only covered the West. No such facility was available in the MENA region, which opened a rich window of opportunity for Careem to enter the industry, embed its roots, and scale sustainably.

The idea behind Careem was to make mobility easier, quicker and more affordable for people worldwide. With a ripe market for disruption and considerable demand in the region, Careem kickstarted its e-hail platform in collaboration with VentureDive as their technology partners.

CREATING THE SOLUTION

Bringing Careem to life

The first production release of Careem took about 8 months, which included the launch of the Careem’s core web application, Rider app (for iOS & Android), Captain app (for Android only), and the admin portal. Being an intricate product with detailed software infrastructure, it was a massive engineering feat to pull off in a short time.

Careem wanted to make the everyday, extraordinary. They wanted their captains to earn more with the lowest possible waiting times. Our development teams spent two weeks at the Careem headquarters to work side by side with their Product and Engineering management teams. After endless meetings and brainstorming, we landed on an innovative approach involving machine learning, which enabled Careem to predict ride demand at any location with 90% accuracy, within 2 weeks. The system was designed and programmed in a way that it learned and attuned itself to customers’ preferences after 6-month use. Choosing the best technology, our teams collectively created robust application architecture and immaculate user flows, making the journey memorable for the Riders.

Team augmentation: Achieving business objectives with dedicated resourcesg

The vast scope of the project required dedicated resources to be allocated for Careem. These included developers, quality assurance engineers and technology consultants. The team consisted of experienced, as well as junior resources, who collaborated with product engineering leads at Careem, to strategize and build the application.

We worked exclusively with Careem, reducing their overhead & infrastructure costs, time spent on recruitment, and management hassles. VentureDive provided them with resources, who were managed by Careem Product and Engineering Managers. They were located remotely in VentureDive’s offices, yet they worked with Careem as if they were a part of their own team. Careem set their goals and objectives, and even reviewed their performances. Meeting all the performance engineering standards set by the Careem Engineering team, we were able to build and deliver the app within record time.

Careem was definitely impressed with our efforts which became evident when they acquired VentureDive’s development team for creating and deploying multiple other verticals they launched.

CELEBRATING THE SUCCESS

From a disruptive startup to becoming an industry leader

Careem’s partnership with VentureDive goes beyond engineering and e-hail solution. It’s about forming lifetime partnerships and friendships along the way, where connections go way back, when Careem, as we know it now, was just an idea. Through such technological innovation, Careem achieved its objective of becoming the e-hail pioneer in the MENA region.