With Bengaluru & Pune On The Cards, InDrive Set To Take On Ola, Uber

US-based ride-hailing platform inDrive has put its India expansion plans in full throttle as it looks to expand its operations to Bengaluru and Pune soon.

“We are spreading to the new cities, which are organically growing as our brand becomes more and more popular in India. Soon, we will launch our services in Bengaluru and Pune,” the company was quoted as saying by the news agency PTI.

InDrive’s move to launch services in Bengaluru could be on the back of the IT hub being one of the biggest ride-hailing markets in the country. For context, Bengaluru residents took the second-highest number of Uber rides in 2022. 

In a statement, the platform claimed that the move was part of InDrive’s global expansion strategy, which aims at creating fairer solutions to address the existing gaps in underserved markets. 

InDrive’s pricing model is quite different from regular cab aggregators. The US-based platform allows users and drivers to negotiate fares among themselves as against the fixed price model, which is currently the norm. 

Curiously, the move to expand comes nearly four years after the ride-hailing platform launched its services in the country in 2019. Since then, it has scaled its operations to as many as 10 Indian cities, including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, and Jaipur, among others. It also offers intercity, freight and delivery services in India.

As part of its expansion plans, InDrive has launched a full-scale marketing campaign to build traction and soon plans to offer services in regional languages, including Tamil. The company also reportedly claimed that it was witnessing a major uptick in active users in Delhi NCR and has already onboarded thousands of drivers in the region.

Delving deeper into its strategy, the platform said that it plans to first venture into smaller neighbouring cities to create synergies and then build from there

The move puts InDrive in direct competition with cab aggregators such as Ola, Uber, and Meru Cabs, among others. 

The startup operates within the larger ride-hailing market, which has seen a big boom in the past few years, led largely by the need for convenience and more disposable income. As a result, the space has seen heavy volumes, with Ola and Uber leading the industry both in terms of the number of trips and distance covered. 

As per a report, the ride-hailing and taxi segment is projected to clinch a revenue of $13.41 Bn at the end of 2023. This number is further estimated to grow marginally to $13.83 Bn by 2027.