Private: a decade in motion: the story being the region’s first tech unicorn

Exclusive on STARZPLAY: a documentary about the hustle behind Careem’s first decade

Careem turns 10!

Your favorite Super App finally made its 10th trip around the sun, and boy what a ride it’s been! 🎢

We feel so blessed to have completed one decade. We have simplified life for over 50 million customers, created over 2 million earning opportunities for Captains, supported our communities, and helped spur the growth of the startup ecosystem that now forms such an important pillar of the region’s growth. :rocket:

A powerful mission to simplify and improve lives and build an awesome organisation that inspires was what powered us to overcome multiple challenges along the way. From working with governments to introduce an entirely new mode of transport to more than 100 cities, and competing neck-to-neck against one of the world’s biggest tech startups, to surviving the drastic shifts brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In celebration of Careem’s big 10, we’re recounting some fun facts you probably didn’t know about this Dubai-grown startup: 

1. Careem was founded on the first day of Ramadan in 2012
2. ‘Careem’ (or كريم) means generous in Arabic
3. Three babies have been born in Careem cars (one of which was even named ‘Kareem’!)  
4. The first line of code for Careem was written in Pakistan
5. To date, 12,190 colleagues have helped build Careem
6. Over 100 startups have been founded by Careem alumni, including SWVL and Bazaar Technologies
7. The longest Careem ride to date was 20 hours long
8. The largest Careem food order was worth $938 from Hakkasan Restaurant in Atlantis, Dubai
9. Careem rides have covered a total distance of 6.06 billion kilometers  (that’s 40 trips to the sun!)
10. In 2014, a large tech outage led Careem employees to quickly move all operations to the building hallway where elevator outlets still worked. If that’s not thinking outside the box (literally), we don’t know what is!

And while we can list 100 more, why read about Careem’s journey when you can watch it instead? 👀

To commemorate this major milestone, we’ve developed an unfiltered documentary that delivers a behind-the-scenes look into the Careem journey over the past ten years and what it takes to build the region’s first tech unicorn from scratch.

Watch A Decade in Motion exclusively on STARZPLAY from Tuesday 18 October.