Careem has carried out a significant round of layoffs this week affecting employees across its global operations, with Pakistani developers among those let go, according to reports that emerged on social media platforms including Reddit and X. The cuts follow the complete shutdown of Careem’s Berlin office and other international locations, representing the latest chapter in an extended restructuring effort by the Dubai-based super-app company that has been scaling back its global footprint over the past several years.
Multiple employees took to the Pakistani developer community on Reddit to share accounts of colleagues being affected, with the layoffs reported to have hit development teams and other functions across Careem’s remaining offices. Careem Technologies, the entity responsible for building the company’s Everything App, currently employs approximately 400 people in Pakistan across engineering and other functions, but the latest reductions indicate the company is tightening its workforce even in markets where it has maintained a continued presence. Several members of Pakistan’s technology community also weighed in on the social media platform X, with one user noting that after its acquisition by Uber, Careem had struggled to find its footing across successive ventures and had effectively been reduced to a ride-hailing operation within the United Arab Emirates. Others pointed to the rise of competitors including Yango and InDrive in Pakistan, and the entry of a Chinese food delivery company into Gulf markets, as signs that Careem’s approach of replicating existing business models was increasingly difficult to sustain against more agile rivals.
The layoffs arrive at a particularly difficult moment for affected Pakistani workers, given the limited alternative opportunities within the domestic technology sector following closures and scaling back by a range of startups in recent years including Airlift, Swvl, VavaCars, and Truck It In. Careem’s history with Pakistan stretches back to its earliest days as a company, with engineers in the country having written some of its first lines of code and the country serving as a key engineering and talent hub. The company had previously exited Pakistan’s ride-hailing market in July 2025 after nearly a decade of operations, citing difficult macroeconomic conditions, intensifying competition, and constraints on global capital allocation, while retaining its technology and engineering teams in the country. The fresh layoffs now raise further questions about the depth of Careem’s long-term commitment to its Pakistan operations, and add to a broader sense of unease within the local technology sector about the sustainability of foreign-backed technology ventures in the country. Careem had previously conducted a major round of workforce reductions in May 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it let go of 536 employees representing 31 percent of its total headcount at the time, following an 80 percent decline in business due to pandemic-era lockdowns.
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