RIYADH: Due to the growing popularity of ride-hailing apps such as Uber’s Careem, a large number of people are considering taking up jobs as drivers permanently as it ensures a steady income.
In Saudi Arabia alone where people initially started using their private vehicles for ride-hailing services as a part-time occupation, now around 40,000 are thinking to take it up as a career permanently as many of them claim to earn around SR10,000 ($3,750) a month, said Saleh Al-Zuwaid, an official spokesperson for the Transport General Authority.
The revelation from the transport official comes at a time when several companies including Uber’s Careem are planning to expand their workforce in Saudi Arabia, owing to increased demand for their transportation services.
While talking to Al-Ekhbariya TV channel, Al-Zuwaid said that more than 800,000 Saudi men and women are currently using these apps to earn their livelihoods.
He said these workers provided more than 65 million trips in 2021.
Al-Zuwaid also stated that more than 10,000 women are currently working in the vehicle guidance sector
Careem, for example, saw at least a two-fold increase in its services across 13 markets in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan in 2021.
It completed 109 million rides, the firm said in its 2021 customer and business trends report.
Cars and bikes transactions grew by 2.6 times compared to December 2020, while delivery and bill payments services grew 2.4 times and 2 times respectively.
In 2021, one in seven customers in Saudi Arabia used multiple services on the app, and the most popular combination of services is ride-hailing and food delivery.
The airports with the most Careem journeys in 2021 were Jeddah with 57,000 trips, Karachi with 211,000 trips, and Dubai with 207,000 trips.