Amit Shah, the Union Home and Cooperation Minister, on Thursday introduced Bharat Taxi, the first cooperative-based ride-hailing application in India, which is a major step in the mobility industry of the country that has traditionally been dominated by privately owned and investor-driven companies.
The platform was launched following a two-month pilot launch and is being marketed as a native and driver-owned service, as an alternative to the existing app-based taxi services.
The rollout of Bharat Taxi has been implemented in the first two states of Delhi-NCR and Gujarat and will be implemented throughout the country in stages.
Regarding the launch event, Mr. Shah indicated that the service would be expanded to all the States and Union Territories in the next two or three years. He said that three years on, Bharat Taxi will be accessible throughout the country, Kashmir to Kanniyakumari and Dwarka to Kamakhya.
Bharat Taxi can be characterized by the zero-commission model of pricing (as opposed to the traditional ride-hailing websites), which are not based on surge pricing.
The platform is incorporated in the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002, and it was officially established on June 6, 2025. The platform has the benefit under its cooperative structure of directly distributing profits to the drivers, as opposed to extracting them as commissions.
Customers are able to book cars, three-wheelers and two-wheelers using the app and this adds to its broad scope of operation in urban and semi-urban regions.
The platform has eight major supporting cooperative organisations and pilot operations started on December 2, 2025, in Delhi-NCR and Gujarat. As per the Ministry of Cooperation, Bharat Taxi has already become the first and the largest co-operative-based ride-hailing platform in the world and the largest driver-owned mobility initiative in the world.
The pilot stage has received a good response. The platform has over three lakh drivers, as well as more than one lakh users who have registered. More than 10,000 rides are already being fulfilled daily in its two pilot regions by the service.
Approximately, one hundred crores are already disbursed directly to drivers according to officials and this shows the financial sustainability of the cooperative model.
One of the areas that Bharat Taxi pays attention to is that of driver welfare. The drivers on the platform, called Sarthasis, have access to various social security benefits in the form of health coverage, accident insurance, and retirement saving benefits.
The platform has also established special support centres to help drivers with the operational and grievance-related problems. Currently, seven of these centres are operating in Delhi alone with others being planned as the service is extended.
Mr. Shah explained that the cooperative model is used to make sure that drivers are not just seen as service providers but are considered as stakeholders who have a say and power to make decisions.
He further stated that Bharat Taxi conforms to the larger view of building up the cooperative movement in India and enhancing self-reliance through the establishment of platforms that are owned and controlled by its working population.
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Focusing on reasonable prices, profit-sharing and social security, Bharat Taxi can be regarded as one of the largest experiments in redesigning the ecosystem of the Indian ride-hailing market.
As the platform readies to go national, its success would substantially change the model of provision of mobility services, and also provide drivers with more economic stability and a voice in the ever-expanding gig economy.
