BY SHAHD ALHAMDAN
JEDDAH — Careem, the region’s leading app-based car booking service, is planning to geographically expand in the Kingdom in 2017, adding new services as well as working on new project with the Ministry of Labor.
The company is also planning to open around 1 million different jobs including captains from now until 2018 on its platform in the countries that its service is available.
Careem, which is currently in 23 cities in Saudi Arabia, is going into new cities to meet the consumers demand, leading to create more jobs for Saudis. The company will add new products and services that will make it much easier for consumers to sign up and to use Careem on a daily basis, according to co-founder and CEO of Careem Dr. Abdullah Elias.
During a conference at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he said Careem is working on driverless cars services project with Dubai City and today has female captains to drop women in Dubai as a new service.
“Around 2,700,000 women in the Kingdom face difficulties to work because of transportation issues and now we are working with the Ministry of Labor on a project for this issue. For disabled people, we are also working on a project with the Ministry to Transport them through Careem,” Elias said.
He explained that since some consumers in the Kingdom do not always have Internet access, Careem is planning and working to solve this issue through having message services where people can order Careem through SMS.
Careem is present in 44 cities around 12 countries and the latest country Careem operates is Turkey. During the initial years, the company has 1,000 drivers, while in the fourth year, it has 150,000 captains signed in its platform. Today, Careem also has around 6 million customers and around 100 million trips everyday.
Asked about how customers accept to have a trip with a Saudi captain, Elias said “everything is changing in Saudi and everything is changing fast. When we started having Saudi captains before 12 months ago, no one ever imagined that by today, around 75 percent of all captains are Saudis. So it is becoming a Saudi service and the service ratings we see, which Saudi captains receive, are in average higher than the non-Saudis. When you offer a great service, people will more and more trust the service, and we see already today that all our customers are very happy with the Saudi captains services.”
Saudi captains are happy with Careem and the company.
He said “captains talk about the services with their friends and they started to come. So what we see after adding Saudi captains. Since 12 months, we have not spend any amount of money for marketing for captains and the growth in terms of captains is increasing.”
Captains word of mouth, the captain who is happy with the service, the way he is welcomed and trained, the way our customers are treating the captains, are the factors that really attract Saudi captains to sign up in Careem’s platform, according to Elias.
“The level of service and the level of nice treatments from the customers are really what makes our work and our platform enjoyable. This is what brings me back to the terms of captain because at the end, he is not a driver, he works, he gets respect, he gets money, and he has full flexibility to work when he ever wants and that’s what make working with Careem very beautiful,” he added.
Average salary for captain working 8 hours depends on the car. For instance, for Car-Go, which is the smallest cars, the captain can earn between SR6,000 thousands to SR8,000. The earning depends also on the city, since in some cities the trip are more expensive than other cities.
If a person wants to apply to be a captain in Careem, all what he needs is to have a car that is 2013 model or above, sign up online, upload his official documents, and get an appointment. Then, the company, after meeting the person, will do several process, including checking the car and training the person to prepare him to be a captain. Careem takes appropriate action on bad evaluation from customers, and the involved captain may be retrained or other options be taken.
