Careem quietly expands its food delivery service ‘Careem Now’ to Jordan with Amman launch, Pakistan next

Careem has quietly expanded its food delivery service Careem Now to Jordan by launching in Amman (without any fanfare we must add), MENAbytes has learned and confirmed. We could not confirm the exact launch date but it has been a few weeks at least since the service was made available to customers in Amman.

First launched in Jeddah and Dubai late last year, Careem Now that also expanded to Riyadh earlier this year, just like Uber Eats is a three-sided marketplace comprised of restaurants, riders, and customers. The company partners with restaurants to list them on its app enabling users to order food from these restaurants. The orders are picked up by Careem Captains and delivered to the customers who have the option to track the delivery in real-time. Careem charges a flat delivery fee from the customer for every delivery and takes a cut from the restaurant as well.

In Amman, the company, according to its app is charging a flat delivery fee of JOD 2.5 (USD 3.53) which is competitive considering that many restaurants on Talabat (which is one of the leading food delivery brands in the country) charge between JOD 3 to 7 for delivery. Talabat’s own delivery service Talabat Go, however, charges JOD 0.5 (USD 0.71) only which makes Careem Now a five times expensive option.

We’ve learned that Amman is one of the fastest growing cities of Careem Now which makes sense as the competition in Amman is not as intense as it is in Saudi & UAE where the market has 2-3 leading international players including Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and many other local food delivery startups that seem to be doing fairly well.

MENAbytes has also learned that the next market for Careem Now is Pakistan. The company is currently onboarding restaurants to launch in Karachi within the next week weeks.

Adeeb Warsi, Managing Director of Careem Now, at the time of its launch last year had said, “Careem Now can do for food delivery what Careem has successfully done for ride-hailing. Over 85 percent of the food delivery markets in our region still operates via traditional call-and-order methods. Through our extensive infrastructure network and technology, we can immediately offer a vastly superior service.”

Careem at the time of launch had also said that it plans to invest $150 million in Careem Now and will later expand into different other delivery verticals to delivery just anything. It will be interesting to see if the company actually proceeds with those plans after Uber completes its acquisition next year.

Update -Jul 15, 2019 – 7:50 AM GMT: The story was updated with details about Talabat Go after receiving information from Talabat’s team.