Careem Outcompeted Uber in Saudi Arabia by Enabling Cash Payments
Mudassir Sheikha · Mudassir Sheikha: The Meeting that Led to $3.1BN Buyout: The Battle Between Uber and Careem | E1056 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Sep 4, 2023 · at 22:25
Mudassir Sheikha is the CEO and co-founder of Careem. He discusses how localized product decisions allowed Careem to compete effectively against Uber's superior capital in the Middle East.
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“Early in Saudi Saudi Arabia, which is of course the largest market in the region not many people at that time had credit cards, or even if they had credit cards, they were not able to use credit cards, and people just preferred paying in cash. So this was something that we spotted very early on, and we said, let's enable cash payments, and while Uber was spending a lot of money in that market, but we were not able to use the service because just they didn't have the cards to pay for the service.”
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