India's cooperative ride-hailing platform Bharat Taxi has signed up 800,000 drivers but averages just 11,000 daily rides. Profit-sharing depends on something no Indian ride-hailing firm has achieved: profitability.
India's government-backed ride-hailing cooperative Bharat Taxi has signed up nearly 800,000 drivers across more than seven cities since its February launch. The drivers have earned a cumulative Rs 84 crore so far, Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament on Aug. 5.
The platform, launched by Shah's cooperation ministry, promises to return 80% of profit to drivers and keep 20% as cooperative capital. It is pitched as a ride-hailing version of Gujarat's Amul or Karnataka's Nandini, the dairy cooperatives that dominate India's milk market.
Sushil, a Delhi driver who has worked for various taxi companies for years, told The Ken he sees a difference. "When Uber and Rapido make money, it stays with them. With this, if it makes money, I get a share too."
The catch is the profit part. Bharat Taxi averages about 11,000 rides per day, mostly in Delhi. That works out to roughly one ride for every 76 drivers on a given day. Profit-sharing will kick in only after the platform itself turns profitable, a bar no Indian ride-hailing company has cleared.
Three well-funded players have spent the better part of a decade trying. Uber lost Rs 1,400 crore in the financial year ending March 2025, according to regulatory filings. Ola lost Rs 660 crore. Rapido lost Rs 260 crore. The cooperative model does not change the underlying economics of Indian ride-hailing, where fares are low, competition is fierce, and drivers expect a cut that leaves little for the platform.
Bharat Taxi is the cooperation ministry's most ambitious bet outside agriculture. The National Cooperation Policy, 2025, calls for cooperatives to enter "new and emerging sectors, in both urban and rural spaces" including water distribution, biogas, waste management, and transportation. The ministry, according to The Ken, is also exploring a cooperative version of quick-service companies like Instahelp and Snabbit, along with cooperatives for plumbers and electricians. A cooperative life-insurance company is in the works.
The push reflects a tacit government acknowledgement that gig workers will account for a growing share of India's workforce and that their fate should not be left entirely to market forces. But the math at Bharat Taxi shows the gap between mission and reality. 800,000 drivers on the books and 11,000 daily rides means most drivers are not getting work through the platform. The cooperative structure gives them a theoretical ownership stake, but that stake has no value until the platform earns a profit.
For the government, the experiment is a test of whether cooperatives can succeed in sectors where private capital has struggled. The dairy model works because farmers have a product to sell and cooperatives control processing and distribution. Ride-hailing has no such vertical integration. The platform is a marketplace, and the marketplace loses money.
Shah told parliament that Bharat Taxi had already earned drivers Rs 84 crore. He did not say how much the platform itself had lost in the process.
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