Hey, Bharat Taxi, I Need a Ride!

Ramesh Chandra starts his morning the way he has for a decade, wiping down his sedan’s dashboard before the city wakes. But something is different now. The app glowing on his phone is not owned by a distant company answering to shareholders in California or Bangalore. He owns a piece of it himself.

Bharat Taxi launched on February 5, 2026, in New Delhi, billed as India’s first driver owned ride hailing platform. Its slogan, “Sarathi hi malik,” translates roughly to “The driver is the owner,” and the claim is structural, not sentimental. For 500, about six dollars, a driver buys share capital in Sahakar Taxi Cooperative Limited, the entity behind the app, acquiring formal membership and ownership rights rather than simply signing up as a contractor.

Behind Bharat Taxi stands a consortium of eight national cooperative institutions, including Amul, NAFED and NABARD, giving the platform an institutional backbone that few ride hailing start ups can claim.

Officials are careful to note what Bharat Taxi is not. Despite its cooperative branding and political support, the Ministry of Cooperation has stated plainly that no government funds, equity or incentives went into building it. The state has encouraged the cooperative framework; it has not bankrolled the company.

The Arithmetic of Belief

The numbers, delivered to the Rajya Sabha on August 12 by Union Minister Amit Shah, tell a story of fast onboarding. As of August 4, Bharat Taxi had registered 8.48 lakh drivers and 44.27 lakh customers, facilitating 11,106 rides daily, with cumulative driver earnings crossing 83.70 crore. The platform now runs in Delhi-NCR, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, with Delhi-NCR alone logging 5,574 of those daily rides, followed by Gujarat at 3,817.

Six months of enrollment at this pace is undeniably fast. But the government’s own figures stop short of disclosing how many of those registered drivers or customers are actually active on any given day, so the ratio of accounts to rides raises a fair question rather than settling one: has Bharat Taxi built a habit, or merely a waiting list?

“Ramesh doesn’t think in ratios. He thinks in fares, and in a small, stubborn hope that the app he now partly owns will one day feel less like an experiment and more like Delhi’s daily rhythm.”

‘Didi at the Wheel’

Bharat Taxi has layered in a women’s mobility push alongside its cooperative pitch.

· Through Sarathi Didi, women passengers can choose a woman driver where one is available, an option aimed at easing the everyday calculus many riders make before booking a cab alone.

· A companion initiative, Bike Didi, works the other side of the equation, recruiting women into bike taxi work rather than simply serving them as passengers; official figures put enrollment at over 150 women drivers by February 2026

Around the World in Strange Cabs

Some cabs just get you there. Others have a story to tell.

1. Turtle Taxi (Japan)

In Yokohama, Sanwa Kotsu’s Turtle Taxi lets passengers press a button labeled ‘Yukkuri,’ Japanese for slow, activating a chime and a turtle icon that signals the driver to ease off the pedal entirely. Popular among elderly riders, pregnant women, and parents with sleeping infants, the service trades speed for gentleness. What began as a quirky experiment has become a small, sincere rebellion against the urgency of ordinary taxis.

2. SeaBubbles (France)

Picture a small electric boat that lifts itself out of the water and appears to fly. That is SeaBubbles, a French water taxi fitted with underwater wings called hydrofoils. Once it picks up speed, the hull rises above the surface, gliding silently with no wake and no emissions. Tested on Lake Annecy, it ferries four passengers at a time, offering a preview of what quiet, futuristic city transport might look like.

3. Dubai’s pink-roof Ladies Taxi

Easy to spot by its pink roof, Dubai’s Ladies Taxi is run by the Dubai Taxi Corporation and staffed entirely by women drivers. Created for women traveling alone or with children, it lets passengers skip the small anxieties that often accompany a solo ride, unfamiliar driver, unfamiliar city, late hour, and simply relax. Widely used near airports, malls and hospitals, the service reflects a quieter truth: sometimes the most radical transport innovation isn’t speed or technology, but trust.

4. The Donkey Taxi of Kenya

In Lamu Old Town, Kenya, cars are largely banned because its ancient lanes are too narrow. Donkeys therefore work as taxis, carrying people, luggage and goods through the UNESCO-listed town. More than 3,000 animals keep this unique transport system moving. But scarce food forces many to search rubbish dumps, where plastic can cause deadly stomach blockages. Lamu’s donkey taxi is both a heritage symbol and an animal-welfare challenge.

5. Monte Toboggan (Madeira, Portugal)

In the hills above Funchal, a wicker basket on wooden runners carries tourists downhill for two kilometers, no engine, no wheels. Two men called carreiros, dressed all in white, jog alongside and steer using nothing but their rubber-soled boots as brakes. The ride started in the 1850s as a real way to get down the mountain. Today it survives purely for fun, a reminder that some old ideas are just too good to retire.

6. Dogsledge Taxi (Greenland)

In Sisimiut, a small Arctic town where roads give way to snow and ice, a local business simply calls itself Dogsledge Taxi. Run by a young couple and a team of Greenlandic sled dogs, it offers everything from two-hour rides to multi-day journeys along the ancient Arctic Circle Trail. There is no meter here, no engine either, just paws, harnesses, and a stretch of frozen wilderness where the taxi still runs on instinct.