Aramex founder and Wamda Capital executive chairman Fadi Ghandour believes consumers will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the rivalry between American tech company Uber, which is set to acquire regional ride-hailing star Careem for $3.1 billion this year, and China’s tech giant Didi Chuxing which boasts over 500 million users.
His comments come after Emaar chairman and Noon founder Mohamed Alabbar revealed his partnership with the world’s largest comprehensive one stop mobile transportation platform – and Uber’s biggest competitor – Didi Chuxing, during the sidelines of Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s visit to China this week.
Alabbar’s Symphony Investments and other institutions signed an agreement with the Beijing-based platform to set up a joint venture headquartered in Abu Dhabi, with an aim to promote the sharing economy and consumer service across the MENA region and China.
Inevitable
Speaking to Arabian Business, Ghandour said: “Here’s my view in general on competition, it is healthy, it is important for any economy and certainly the consumer will benefit greatly. It is how innovation happens and how an affordable service is provided.”
He added that Didi’s expansion into the Middle East was “inevitable”.
“As for Didi coming to Abu Dhabi then most probably the rest of the region, I always thought that it is inevitable that competition to Uber/Careem would come from one of the mobility companies operating in emerging markets, be it, Didi, Go-Jek, Ola, or Grab.
“There is no winner take all, when the market has one player, it will always attract others, just like Careem and Uber shared the market before merging,” he said.
In a blog post on Wamda in March, Ghandour said he “would have liked Careem to go public and remain independent because that is how you make the biggest statement about the maturity of the regional tech ecosystem”.
However he said the region “is not mature and wouldn’t have been able to support such an initial public offering (IPO) due to regulatory, liquidity and other hurdles that the regional regulators have not yet been able to resolve”.
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