The UAE’s biggest telecoms operator e& — formerly known as Etisalat — is looking more like the modern technology company it set out to become in the early days of the pandemic, following the purchase of a majority stake in Careem's Super App and a deal with MasterCard to support its mobile wallet.
In an interview with The National, the company's group chief executive Hatem Dowidar recalled being tapped for the firm's top job and returning to the UAE from England in the early months of the pandemic, onboard a flight carrying only about six other passengers and a cargo of fruits and vegetables.
While the flight was a dramatic way to begin his tenure, it also was the start of a new journey for the now 47 year-old company.
"It's at that time that we started to think of how we can run business differently," Mr Dowidar said.
"Traditionally, telcos are the pipe that the digital world connects through. But we have now been working in the last few years on how we can evolve from being the pipe that connects, to actually also having what's running inside the pipe."
Earlier this month, e& made one of its most significant investments to date amid its technology push, signing a $400 million deal to acquire a majority stake in Careem's Super App, spinning the product out from Uber which purchased Careem in 2019 for $3.1 billion.
Mr Dowidar noted that in a way, this means Careem's co-founders Mudassir Sheikha and Magnus Olsson are joining the e& team, as the Super App will continue to be managed by the pair of well-respected entrepreneurs and, he added, retain the Careem brand.
The app is available in 80 cities across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and offers a range of localised services, including food and grocery delivery, a digital wallet for payments and remittances, and third-party services to book things like home cleaning.
The idea of an "everything app" is not new but it is catching on.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk merged Twitter with his firm X Corp. Though Twitter is still functional as a social media platform, the move is believed to be one of Mr Musk’s first step towards transforming the company into an “everything app” like China’s WeChat, which is used primarily for payments and messaging and boasts over 1.2 billion users.
In the past, Mr Musk has indicated that acquiring Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X, his venture toward building an “everything app”.
E& has 162 million subscribers, according to its 2022 earnings report. Mr Dowidar declined to comment on the number of active users on the Super App, which has 50 million registered users, according to Careem.
He said there is also a possibility to eventually integrate video streaming platform Starzplay Arabia, which e& bought a majority stake in last year with a consortium of investors, into the Super App.
But more urgently, e& plans to integrate its payments platform, e& Money, into the Careem app, which massively expanded where it is accepted as payment through a deal with MasterCard signed earlier this year.
E& is also expanding its exposure to other markets through its recent upped stake in Vodafone, the biggest telecom in Europe. The move provides diversification in e&'s income and offers possible synergies for serving customers in Europe, according to Mr Dowidar.
