Could Rapido’s subscriptions pivot be a silver bullet to all its problems?

When ride-hailing company Rapido announced its entry into the four-wheeler cab business in December, it surprised many. Already the leader in the two-wheeler taxi space, the Bengaluru-based company had spent the last few years scrapping for market share with giants Ola and Uber in India’s auto-hailing space. Now, even as it was dealing with the rapid rise of Namma Yatri in the auto-hailing battle, it would be taking on the deep-pocketed duo of Ola and Uber in a space they had controlled for the past decade.

Rapido, though, believed it could disrupt the country’s cab market by doing away with the commissions that its larger rivals charged driver partners. Instead, it launched its cab business on the back of a software-as-a-service subscription model, which saw drivers pay a fixed fee to join its platform, pocketing the entirety of the fares they earned rather than paying a cut to Rapido on each ride.

Earlier this month, Rapido went from disrupting the taxi cab incumbents to disrupting itself in the auto-hailing business. It announced that its auto business, its biggest revenue driver, would also shift to the zero-commission subscription model as well. This, the company tells The CapTable, was done after piloting a number of models over the past year.