Building a Successful Superapp: Lessons from Careem

November 2024

Fintech & Payments

Michael Greenwood

Senior Research Analyst

Superapps have been a major point of discussion in the fintech space for several years, with many payment apps and digital wallets having ambitions to become one. The primary motivation for becoming a superapp is the expansion of revenue streams, which can increase an app’s profitability and diversify its sources of revenue, protecting the business from a downturn in any one area.

Given this advantage, it is easy to understand why a digital wallet would want to become a fully fledged super app. There is clearly growing potential for this, with our latest forecasts showing that the number of people using digital wallets will grow by 46% between 2024 and 2029.

Number of People Using Digital Wallets (m), 2024 and 2029

Source: Juniper Research

For businesses looking to adopt the superapp model, it is important to understand how other successful superapps have gained their position in their respective markets.

Let's look at Careem. 

Careem was founded in 2012 in the UAE as a ride-hailing app. Since its launch, it has expanded its geographic coverage, and is now available in cities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, and Kuwait. It has also expanded into groceries, deliveries, and payments. By 2024, Careem had more than 48 million customers across 80 cities in the 10 countries in which it operates.

Almost all superapps start off as specialised apps; in Careem’s case this was as a ride-hailing app. The advantage of starting off in this way is that it requires less development to get a working app ready to deploy compared with a more broadly focused one; allowing for lower costs and faster time to market. Another strength of this method is that it allows the app to target a specific gap in the market to build up a user base.

Source: Careem

It is important that, if a brand is launching a specialised app, with the intention of it becoming a superapp, the app is designed with modularity in mind. This will make it easier to integrate new features into the app as it grows. One effective way to go about this would be to build the app using a third-party platform. This is cheaper than hiring a development team to build it, and it allows the new app to benefit from the experience of the platform provider. It is crucial that a business selects the right platform for their app as, once one is selected, the vendor is limited by the platform’s capabilities. This means that selecting the wrong platform can prevent a vendor from expanding its capabilities into new areas as opportunities present themselves. 

Once an app is established, the next step is to grow it. This is in terms of user base, geographic coverage, and range of services offered. In Careem’s case, it took the approach of focusing on expanding geographically. Between 2012 and 2017, it expanded to cover the 10 countries it covers today, but the only added features were ones which strengthened its ride-sharing business. This strategy grows the user base, building trust and familiarity with users. Due to this, as services expand, existing customers are more likely to adopt a new service from a provider with which they are already familiar. 

A payment feature is a consistent part of most superapps. This allows the app to facilitate payments for its own services internally, as well as to tap into revenue from different types of money transfers. Careem first entered into the digital payment space with Careem Pay, a closed-loop P2P money transfer system. This was expanded into a full open-loop payment wallet in 2020, which allowed it to make payments and withdraw funds from the ecosystem. In 2023, Careem added remittances, starting off with the UAE-Pakistan corridor. This was to take advantage of the fact many of its drivers were Pakistani citizens who already transferred their income back to Pakistan. This was sufficiently successful that it has since expanded to include remittance corridors to the UK, India, and the Philippines.

This shows two important trends to making a successful superapp: understanding users and integrating suitable new services with existing ones. Careem understood that many its users were migrant workers who would be sending money to their home country. As these workers were earning money as drivers on the Careem app, this meant it already stored the money the user wished to transfer. This combined the ride-hailing element of the app with the remittance feature; creating an overall stronger offering. When adding new features, particularly payment ones, a brand must look at who its customer base is and what services it already offers. By offering services that synergise with existing offerings, and targeting existing customers, an app can maximise the chances of a new feature’s success. The downside to this is it focuses on an existing user base; potentially limiting its ability to grow the total customer base.

Source: infinum

Careem sets a clear example of how to grow a specialised app into a superapp, with others such as Grab and Gojek following similar paths. Vendors looking to launch an app or expand an existing one must understand what these success stories did to get to where they are, and draw relevant lessons for themselves. Key considerations are modularity from the beginning to simplify the process of expanding the wallet as it grows, targeting features to a specific audience or a gap in the market, and using inbuilt payments and funds to provide a seamless checkout experience and keep a user’s money within the superapp ecosystem. 

Michael is a Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research, and primarily conducts research on digital identity and payments markets. His recent reports include Digital Wallets, Digital Identity, and Instant Payments.