{"id":35188,"date":"2017-07-17T09:13:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T09:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=35188"},"modified":"2017-07-17T09:13:49","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T09:13:49","slug":"mideast-ride-hailing-firm-careem-buys-stake-in-egyptian-transport-start-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/lifestyle\/mideast-ride-hailing-firm-careem-buys-stake-in-egyptian-transport-start-up.html","title":{"rendered":"MidEast ride-hailing firm Careem buys stake in Egyptian transport start-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">MidEast ride-hailing firm Careem buys stake in Egyptian transport start-up<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">MidEast ride-hailing firm Careem buys stake in Egyptian transport start-up Ride-hailing firm Careem, a Middle East rival to Uber Technologies Inc, has bought a minority stake in a three-month-old Egyptian start-up that connects commuters with private buses in Cairo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Dubai-based Careem invested $500,000 in Swvl and Chief Experience Officer and Co-Founder Magnus Olsson will take a board seat.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Careem, which operates in 12 countries mainly in the Middle East, declined to disclose the exact size of the stake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Swvl, founded in April by a former Careem executive, is a bus transportation service where passengers can reserve and pay their fare through the company&#8217;s mobile app.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The app uses the passenger&#8217;s location and destination to find the shortest possibly journey time based on the nearest bus station that travels along fixed routes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">&#8220;We want them to run and learn and develop at a very high pace and high agility and we believe the best way for them to do that is to stay independent,&#8221; Olsson told Reuters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Careem said in June it would accelerate expansion plans after raising $500 million from investors, including German carmaker Daimler and Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Kingdom Holding.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Swvl, which is not an on-demand service like ride-hailing apps Uber and Careem, has 50,000 passengers and 200 buses using the mobile app, Chief Executive and Co-Founder Mostafa Kondil told Reuters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">It is targeting 300,000 monthly trips by the end of 2017, Kondil said. He declined to say how many monthly trips were being registered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Swvl will use the Careem investment to increase its workforce, develop new app features, and to expand in Cairo and into other cities, including Egypt&#8217;s second-largest city Alexandria, and to Middle Eastern and Asian countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan next year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">&#8220;We&#8217;re planning to really improve our product,&#8221; Kondil said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">source:-http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-egypt-careem-idUSKBN1A20AV<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/lifestyle\/mideast-ride-hailing-firm-careem-buys-stake-in-egyptian-transport-start-up.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MidEast ride-hailing firm Careem buys stake in Egyptian transport start-up MidEast ride-hailing firm Careem buys stake in Egyptian transport start-up Ride-hailing firm Careem, a Middle East rival to Uber Technologies Inc, has bought a minority stake in a three-month-old Egyptian start-up that connects commuters with private buses in Cairo. Dubai-based [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[23094,23093],"class_list":["post-35188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-technology","tag-careem-buys-stake-in-egyptian","tag-mideast-ride-hailing-firm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}