Uber has acquired Careem, its Middle East competitor, for $3.1 billion -- $1.4 billion in cash and $1.7 billion in convertible notes, reports Reuters. According to the report, Uber and Careem had been in negotiations for the last 9 months. Bloomberg had reported in July last year that Uber was in talks to merge with Careem, months after it sold its Southeast Asian business to Grab. Presently, Careem will operate as an independent brand to start with, and its co-founders Mudassir Sheikha, Magnus Olsson and Abdulla Elyas will continue with the company. It will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber. Careem was founded in 2012, and its investors include Daimler AG, Didi Chuxing, Rakuten Inc and Kingdom Holding Company. Headquartered in Dubai, it is present in 100 cities across 14 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey. Careem claims to have 975,000 full time and part time drivers (who it calls Captains) and over 15 million users. Careem’s India connection, Uber’s bus aggregation in India Interestingly, last September, Careem and Shuttl, an Indian bus aggregator, acqui-hired Commut, a Hyderabad based mass transit company, for an undisclosed amount. Careem will use the acquisition to expand into mass transit services by adding buses in its 100 cities. In December, Uber launched a bus service in Cairo, Egypt. At this time, we said that if Uber’s global firsts (like cash in India) were anything to go by, Uber Bus would open shop in India soon, maybe even in the…
