Early Times Report
GANDHINAGAR, June 27: Union Cooperation Minister Amit Shah on Saturday alleged some private transport service companies are engaging in unfair competition by operating at a loss and slashing fares to drive out the cooperative mobility platform, Bharat Taxi.
He declared that Bharat Taxi will reach more than 500 cities across India within two years.
Speaking at the official launch of Bharat Taxi in Gujarat at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar, Shah said reports claiming Bharat Taxi’s fares are higher were misleading.
He launched Bharat Taxi service in 14 major cities of the state, including Ahmedabad, Surat, Dwarka, Vadodara, Rajkot, Somnath, Valsad, Anand, Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Nadiad, Junagadh, Mehsana and Amreli.
Bharat Taxi was soft-launched in Gujarat in December 2025.
“Today, I received some phone calls, and some newspapers have reported that Bharat Taxi’s fares are higher. I want to tell customers across the country that wherever Bharat Taxi is entering, competing companies are slashing their fares, ready to incur losses.”
“Our objective in this competition is not to cause losses to anyone. This pattern of reducing fares and offering higher commissions to sarathis (drivers) has been adopted only to stop Bharat Taxi’s entry into the market,” he said.
According to Shah, some companies want to engage in unfair competition, operate at a loss, and drive Bharat Taxi out of the market.
“They want to prevent Bharat Taxi from succeeding so that they can once again operate arbitrarily,” Shah said, adding that such “tactics”won’t work in India, where “the spirit of cooperation and the desire to work for the welfare of others are the greatest strength”.
Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Deputy CM Harsh Sanghavi, Minister Jitu Vaghani, Ministry of Cooperation secretary Dr Ashish Kumar Bhutani, senior functionaries from the cooperative sector, representatives of various institutions, and more than 4,000 ‘Saarthis’ associated with Bharat Taxi attended the event.
Notably, Bharat Taxi is India’s first cooperative-led, driver-owned ride-hailing service, launched to provide a fairer alternative to traditional aggregators. Backed by the Central government and major cooperatives, it operates on a zero-commission model where drivers are platform owners and keep the full fare.
Shah, meanwhile, noted that private companies exploited both drivers and customers for their own profit.
“For their profits, these companies exploited countless sarathis as well as citizens who used taxi services. Various complaints kept pouring in...sometimes they deducted commissions from the driver’s earnings, and the fare did not reach them for several days,” Shah said.
He pointed out that registrations were suddenly suspended without any hearing by the private cab aggregators.
“If a customer filed a complaint, the registration of the driver or sarathi would be cancelled without even hearing their side,” he added.
Shah said that the cooperative model of Bharat Taxi was adopted to end the exploitation model of companies.
“Bharat Taxi’s primary objective is to ensure that neither sarathis nor customers are exploited,” he said.
After launching the Bharat Taxi service in 14 major cities of Gujarat, Shah said, “From today, Bharat Taxi has been officially launched in three categories: two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws, and four-wheelers”.
Bharat Taxi also signed the Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Gujarat State Cooperative Bank, Traffic Police, Surat, Rajkot and Ahmedabad airports, and the Ahmedabad Division of Western Railway to expand its operations.
Shah declared that within two years, Bharat Taxi will reach more than 500 cities across India.
“Bharat Taxi will reach Nagpur, Pune, Mumbai, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Kolkata before July 31. Within two years, covering both large and small places, we are going to launch our two-wheeler, auto-rickshaw and four-wheeler concept in 500 cities and towns,” Shah said.
Shah told the Saarthis that they are members of a very large cooperative family that already includes crores of farmers across the country.
“Our beloved Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave us the mantra of ‘Sahakar Se Samriddhi’ (Prosperity through Cooperation) to realise that vision in the mobility and transportation sector as well. The cooperative movement is now expanding. This cooperative model will be expanded into other sectors, too,” Shah added. |
