Uber-owned Careem is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) as it looks to evolve from its original business model and move more than just people.
The company's new head of engineering is training employees, developing a competitive internship programme and leveraging the company’s new remote-first culture to recruit senior staff as it builds real-time machine learning capabilities.
"The biggest pivot in 2021 is a greater focus on that [customer] feedback loop," Baber Shaikh, VP of engineering and mobility, told The National. "How do we make our data systems close to real time? How do we begin to take advantage of 5G?"
The next-generation network will exponentially increase data flows, allowing Careem to build algorithms that better anticipate and cater to consumer preferences as the company pivots to being a mobility company that moves not just people but money, food and products, too.
The company is in the midst of a business transformation strategy and a return to growth following a year that saw its ride-hailing business decline sharply but ushered in new areas of potential. Careem’s delivery business grew four-fold and mobile payments doubled. Its $50 million Super App, which rolled out in July, pulled all of its services – ride-hailing, grocery and pharmacy delivery and Careem Pay – into a single programme. Ninety-six per cent of Careem users made the switch to the app.
To keep pace with what Mr Shaikh called “a rapid pivot”, the company is hiring across its engineering unit, which currently employs about 170 people. The company has 212 job openings right now.
Its new engineering lead is focused on developing a team that is ready to handle a new era in machine learning. In 2020, common wisdom around consumer data science went out the window, he said.
“Historically, what companies took pride in was the quantity or the quality of the data. If I had lots of data going back a decade, I had an advantage on you because you could model off that data” and begin to make predictions and anticipate preferences.
“But when the pandemic happened, customer behaviour changed. And because that customer behaviour changed, it reset a lot of the trends. You had invalidated the historical data that existed.”
Building algorithms that compare moment-to-moment rather than seasonal or annual changes is Careem’s new approach to development.
Mr Shaikh is a pragmatist. He sees his role as developing technology that helps ferry anything from Point A to Point B in the cheapest and fastest way possible.
A pressing challenge right now is building technology infrastructure to better manage the supply side of consumer demand – whether that’s during a peak travel period in Dubai or the types of groceries and when people want them in Karachi. The insights can help drive down both costs and time.
To build these capabilities, Mr Shaikh is focused on building a pipeline of talent from local universities. He wants Careem internships to have the prestige of bagging a summer gig at Google or Facebook for Stanford or CalTech students.
“I want to see the reverse brain drain,” Mr Shaikh said, referring to the phenomenon of well-educated young adults fleeing major education hubs in the region for more attractive employment opportunities elsewhere.
Building research relationships with universities in the region will also help power the development of intellectual property. This is an area of focus that helped propel the US and China to become global leaders in artificial intelligence.
He is optimistic about the possibility.
“We have an ecosystem that is being built here which mirrors [Silicon] Valley very closely. I think we will continue to pull great talent from the Valley and from the big tech hubs into our region.”
He would know. Mr Shaikh joined the company four months ago following a 20-year career on the West Coast of the US, where he developed products for Microsoft’s Xbox and worked on the gaming unit of chipmaker Nvidia.
His five years at Nvidia were instructive, he said, as the California-based company transitioned from a traditional chipmaker to one underpinned by artificial intelligence, selling its semiconductors to power Tesla’s autonomous vehicle technology and growing exponentially, outpacing Intel as the biggest US chipmaker by market cap in July.
While he managed engineering teams from Moscow to Shanghai, over the last few years Mr Shaikh said the technology news coming out of the Middle East, and Dubai in particular, piqued his interest. Stories about Dubizzle, Souq, Property Finder and Careem gave him the impression of “a lot of positive energy coming out of the region”.
“The mission [Careem] had around simplifying the lives of the people in the region was really exciting to me,” he said, adding that the speed and potential to build something entirely new was a challenge he was ready for in this phase of his career.
“When we were building Xbox, we inherited payments, we inherited [user] identity, we inherited a good tech infrastructure. So when we were launching Xbox Live, we just kind of took those things for granted. That's not what was happening here.
“Careem was not just spearheading ride-hailing at its core, it was spearheading data and AI, mapping and technology. It takes a tremendous amount of energy and effort and a sense of direction and mission.”
To take it to the next level, Mr Shaikh is developing a more tech-focused mentorship programme internally, and leaning on the company’s remote-first work culture – first introduced in September – to attract international talent.
As for parent company Uber, which finalised its $3.1 billion purchase of Careem last year, Mr Shaikh said so far the company has had no say in day-to-day business decisions or strategy. The two companies are, however, in ongoing conversations to share intellectual property.
“Uber can accelerate our learnings in terms of algorithms and models,” he said, and minimise the “experimentation” phase of building a new product.
“What I want to make progress on as somebody who's helping lead engineering, is to minimise mistakes, learn from experience and then move rapidly to take advantage of all the goodness that's happening in the region.”
The specs: 2018 Ducati SuperSport S
Price, base / as tested: Dh74,900 / Dh85,900
Engine: 937cc
Transmission: Six-speed gearbox
Power: 110hp @ 9,000rpm
Torque: 93Nm @ 6,500rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 5.9L / 100km
The biog
Name: Abeer Al Bah
Born: 1972
Husband: Emirati lawyer Salem Bin Sahoo, since 1992
Children: Soud, born 1993, lawyer; Obaid, born 1994, deceased; four other boys and one girl, three months old
Education: BA in Elementary Education, worked for five years in a Dubai school
Graduated from the American University of Sharjah
She is the eldest of three brothers and two sisters
Has helped solve 15 cases of electric shocks
Enjoys travelling, reading and horse riding
The specs: 2018 Chevrolet Trailblazer
Price, base / as tested Dh99,000 / Dh132,000
Engine 3.6L V6
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Power 275hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque 350Nm @ 3,700rpm
Fuel economy combined 12.2L / 100km
Our legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Match info
Uefa Champions League Group C
Liverpool v Napoli, midnight
BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES
SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities
Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails
Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies
Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Switch%20Foods%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Edward%20Hamod%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Abu%20Dhabi%2C%20UAE%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Plant-based%20meat%20production%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2034%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%246.5%20million%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%20round%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Seed%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Based%20in%20US%20and%20across%20Middle%20East%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
From Europe to the Middle East, economic success brings wealth - and lifestyle diseases
A rise in obesity figures and the need for more public spending is a familiar trend in the developing world as western lifestyles are adopted.
One in five deaths around the world is now caused by bad diet, with obesity the fastest growing global risk. A high body mass index is also the top cause of metabolic diseases relating to death and disability in Kuwait, Qatar and Oman – and second on the list in Bahrain.
In Britain, heart disease, lung cancer and Alzheimer’s remain among the leading causes of death, and people there are spending more time suffering from health problems.
The UK is expected to spend $421.4 billion on healthcare by 2040, up from $239.3 billion in 2014.
And development assistance for health is talking about the financial aid given to governments to support social, environmental development of developing countries.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
RESULTS
Dubai Kahayla Classic – Group 1 (PA) $750,000 (Dirt) 2,000m
Winner: Deryan, Ioritz Mendizabal (jockey), Didier Guillemin (trainer).
Godolphin Mile – Group 2 (TB) $750,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner: Secret Ambition, Tadhg O’Shea, Satish Seemar
Dubai Gold Cup – Group 2 (TB) $750,000 (Turf) 3,200m
Winner: Subjectivist, Joe Fanning, Mark Johnston
Al Quoz Sprint – Group 1 (TB) $1million (T) 1,200m
Winner: Extravagant Kid, Ryan Moore, Brendan Walsh
UAE Derby – Group 2 (TB) $750,000 (D) 1,900m
Winner: Rebel’s Romance, William Buick, Charlie Appleby
Dubai Golden Shaheen – Group 1 (TB) $1.5million (D) 1,200m
Winner: Zenden, Antonio Fresu, Carlos David
Dubai Turf – Group 1 (TB) $4million (T) 1,800m
Winner: Lord North, Frankie Dettori, John Gosden
Dubai Sheema Classic – Group 1 (TB) $5million (T) 2,410m
Winner: Mishriff, John Egan, John Gosden
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
Key changes
Commission caps
For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:
• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• On the protection component, there is a cap of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated.
• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.
• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.
Disclosure
Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.
“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”
Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.
Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.
“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.
Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.
TRAP
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donaghue
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Rating: 3/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Why are asylum seekers being housed in hotels?
The number of asylum applications in the UK has reached a new record high, driven by those illegally entering the country in small boats crossing the English Channel.
A total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.
Asylum seekers and their families can be housed in temporary accommodation while their claim is assessed.
The Home Office provides the accommodation, meaning asylum seekers cannot choose where they live.
When there is not enough housing, the Home Office can move people to hotels or large sites like former military bases.
The five pillars of Islam
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
About Karol Nawrocki
• Supports military aid for Ukraine, unlike other eurosceptic leaders, but he will oppose its membership in western alliances.
• A nationalist, his campaign slogan was Poland First. "Let's help others, but let's take care of our own citizens first," he said on social media in April.
• Cultivates tough-guy image, posting videos of himself at shooting ranges and in boxing rings.
• Met Donald Trump at the White House and received his backing.
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
The biog
Favourite pet: cats. She has two: Eva and Bito
Favourite city: Cape Town, South Africa
Hobby: Running. "I like to think I’m artsy but I’m not".
Favourite move: Romantic comedies, specifically Return to me. "I cry every time".
Favourite spot in Abu Dhabi: Saadiyat beach
