Remember the good, old days when you could just book Careem for commuting without having to see four cancellations and pay a quarter of your salary on a single ride? Well, as they say, the past is another country. But seriously, what happened?
After all, this was the biggest a tech company had reached in Pakistan, at least in the consumer space. Between 2015 and 2019, the ride-hailing giant completed a cumulative 236 million trips of which 100m came in 2019 alone — its best year. That translates into almost 274,000 trips daily. Sure, things were always bound to change after the acquisition when the venture dollars stopped pouring in and the blitzscaling gave way to a more mature stage. Then obviously Covid-19 did its fair share of damage.
According to an Oxford Economics report on Careem shared with Dawn, the company had over 82,000 active captains in January 2020 collectively making 7.8m trips during the month — already below the peak levels. Come April, at the height of the lockdown, the corresponding numbers stood at just 10,400 and 380,000, plunging by 88 per cent and 95pc respectively. By December, the ride-hailing player had made 70pc recovery in active captain and 51pc in trips compared to the beginning of year values.
“If you look at the different markets in which the company operates, Pakistan has received the maximum amount of investment at over $100m,” says Careem CEO
But while ride-hailing continued to take a hit around the world, gig economy companies were...
Read Full Story: https://www.dawn.com/news/1655285/why-have-rides-become-so-expensive
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