Due to the pandemic, many businesses have changed their strategies. Careem is one of them. Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Careem announced that it would be the first remote company as its 1,190 employees out of the total of 1,314 will have the freedom to work remotely.
Work from home was the only strategy for almost every business throughout the world during Covid-19. Later, there were many debates on whether to adopt the strategy permanently or not. While many corporate businesses are still debating, Careem has adopted this strategy, which will significantly reduce its costs for sure.
“We are not closing any of our offices, but we will redesign our workplace and this will help us in reducing our real estate cost,” the CEO said.
In an interview, Co-Founder Mudassir Sheikha said initially the strategy was “imposed on us and other businesses as well due to sudden lockdowns to contain the spread of Covid-19, but it worked positively for the company.” “We observed better performance in our business due to the remote work strategy. And our results for the first and second quarters of 2020 were better than expected,” he said.
“We later conducted some internal surveys after realizing that this strategy is working in our favour. And the business has not undergone any destruction,” he pointed out. “Why not implement this as a permanent strategy for our business?” he questioned.
The company has 1.7 million captains operating the fleet globally, of which 0.5 million are in Pakistan. The company has so far invested $80 million in Pakistan with a total workforce of 425 employees.
The work-from-home strategy too has challenges since it cannot work for every individual. “We need to invest in changing systems and working environment to change mindsets, offices and goals,” Sheikha added.