Saudi Arabia Eyes Economic Boost from Women Drivers.
QUEST: A recent study says that Saudi Arabia's decision to end its ban on women driving could actually boost the Saudi economy by $90 billion over the next 10 years or more. Careem, which is the Middle East's answer to Uber says it will help transform the country and Careem is already hiring female drivers and reportedly attracting takeover interest from Uber. I spoke to Careem's co-founder before those reports emerged and there was enthusiastic opportunity he said across the country.</s>ABDULLA ELYAS, CO-FOUNDER, CAREEM: I cannot think of more exciting times to be in Saudi than now. We indeed opened up our platform for captainess (ph), how we call them, to come on board, female drivers and drive for Careem. And you know, we are super excited about that because our mission is to ease the lives of people and so far we have been able to create income opportunities for men, Saudi men who came on board and have driven with us. Now with the decree coming to action, we are able to address a whole 50 percent of the society and tell them, come on board and drive for Careem, we give you an income opportunity and with that we transform your life and make it more easier and more enjoyable.</s>QUEST: This is indeed a major shift, and I suppose the next -- you know, it is always the case of not what just happened, but what comes next because the prospective captainess(ph) still need male approval or permission to apply to become captainess (ph), don't they?</s>ELYAS: So when captainess (ph) apply to work on Careem, they can apply to work on Careem without any additional approval from someone else. We opened up the platform, 2,000 women applied and they are now going through the training process and some of them are already driving around since last Sunday and driving our passengers around. I cannot -- I'm not here to predict what will happen next in terms of change of regulation, but what I know for a fact is that a lot of what we have being knowing as the social rules in our society are being changed, and we are as excited and very ready. And I'll give you an example. Two years ago, it was an absolute taboo for a Saudi to drive as a taxi driver. Now, when we opened up our platform for Saudis to come on board, everybody told us this is not going to fly at all. When we did, we completely transformed our industry. By today -- and I'm talking only about two years, by today, we have 170 men, Saudi men -- 170,000 Saudi men already working for us here on our platform, and we're talking about 95 percent of the overall fleet is now Saudi. And with that, I'm very confident that the change which is happening will pick up very fast.</s>QUEST: The CEO of Careem, and we will have our profitable moment after the break.