Somewhere in Pune’s Kothrud neighbourhood, a man named Raju Shinde used to earn roughly ₹900 a day ferrying passengers through the city’s chaotic traffic. That was before Ola and Uber slashed fares and flooded his routes with incentivised drivers. By 2023, his daily take-home had dropped to ₹500 on good days, and nearly 25% of that vanished into app commissions. Then, in early 2024, Shinde and 39 other auto-rickshaw drivers in his locality did something that most gig economy observers didn’t see coming — they registered a cooperative society under the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies Act and launched their own ride-hailing service.
I first heard about this initiative through a cooperative sector contact in Maharashtra, and frankly, I was sceptical. A forty-member auto-rickshaw cooperative going up against billion-dollar platforms? It sounded like a headline designed for social media sympathy, not a sustainable business. But the more I dug into it, the more I realised this wasn’t a stunt. It was a structural response to a structural problem — and it carries lessons for the entire cooperative movement in India.
Why This Matters Beyond Pune’s Streets
India has approximately 1.5 crore auto-rickshaws operating across its cities and towns. In cities like Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, aggregator platforms now control a significant share of ride bookings. The economics are brutal: drivers typically pay 20-30% commission per ride to platforms, with surge pricing benefits rarely trickling down proportionally. The Ministry of Cooperation, formed in 2021, has repeatedly spoken about extending cooperative principles into new sectors — but the gig economy has remained largely untouched by cooperative intervention. What these Pune drivers attempted is, in miniature, exactly the kind of disruption the ministry talks about in policy documents but struggles to deliver on the ground.
From Metre to Algorithm: A Brief History of Auto-Rickshaw Organisation
Auto-rickshaw unions in India are not new. Pune alone has had multiple unions affiliated to political parties since the 1980s. But unions traditionally fought for fare revisions and permit allocations — they never built alternative business models. The shift began around 2015-2016, when Ola and Uber aggressively entered the three-wheeler segment. Drivers initially welcomed the platforms for steady bookings. Within three years, the honeymoon ended. Incentives dried up, commissions rose, and algorithmic pricing left drivers with little control over their earnings.
The Pune cooperative — registered as the Sahakari Auto Seva Cooperative Society in Kothrud — traces its origin to a WhatsApp group. In 2023, a group of drivers began sharing daily earnings screenshots, and the pattern was undeniable: after fuel, maintenance, and platform commissions, net margins were collapsing. One of the founding members, who had previously worked in a dairy cooperative in Kolhapur district, suggested the cooperative model. By January 2024, they had their registration, a modest seed fund of approximately ₹2 lakh collected from member contributions, and a basic booking system running on a shared phone number and a locally developed app.
The model was simple — zero commission from drivers, a flat monthly membership fee of ₹300, and fares strictly by the government-mandated metre rate.
How the Cooperative Actually Runs in 2026
I spoke to people familiar with the cooperative’s operations, and here’s what the current structure looks like. The society has grown from 40 to approximately 78 members as of early 2026. Each member pays a one-time share capital of ₹1,000 and the monthly ₹300 fee. This funds a part-time coordinator, a basic customer helpline, and the maintenance of their booking app, which was developed by a Pune-based tech collective for a subsidised fee.
The revenue model is deliberately lean. There are no investors, no venture capital, and no growth-at-all-costs mentality. Rides are booked either through the app or through direct phone calls — and the cooperative claims a customer retention rate that rivals the aggregators in their specific service zones across Kothrud, Warje, and parts of Karve Nagar.
| Parameter | Aggregator Platform (Ola/Uber) | Sahakari Auto Seva Cooperative |
|---|---|---|
| Commission per ride | 20-30% | Zero (flat monthly fee) |
| Driver’s daily net income (approx.) | ₹500-650 | ₹750-900 |
| Fare structure | Dynamic/surge pricing | Government metre rate |
| Membership/joining cost | Free (but vehicle standards apply) | ₹1,000 share + ₹300/month |
| Customer complaint resolution | App-based, slow | Direct phone, same-day |
| Coverage area | City-wide | 3-4 localities (expanding) |
The most striking figure: members report earning ₹200-300 more per day compared to when they worked exclusively with aggregator platforms. Over a month, that translates to roughly ₹6,000-9,000 — a life-changing margin for a household surviving on ₹15,000-18,000 monthly.
What Could Break This Model
I don’t want to romanticise this. The cooperative faces serious challenges. First, scale. With 78 members covering three localities, they are a hyperlocal operation. Aggregators win because they are everywhere — a customer opening Ola doesn’t think in terms of neighbourhoods. Second, technology. Their app is functional but lacks the polish and reliability of platforms backed by hundreds of crores in engineering budgets. Third, political interference. Maharashtra’s cooperative sector is notoriously entangled with local politics, and as this model gains visibility, there’s a real risk of co-option by party-affiliated unions.
There’s also the question of regulatory ambiguity. Aggregator platforms operate under Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines issued by the central government. A cooperative offering similar services occupies a grey zone — it isn’t technically an aggregator, but it functions like one. If regulatory bodies decide to enforce aggregator compliance on cooperatives, the cost burden could be crippling. The NCDC (National Cooperative Development Corporation) has funding schemes for service cooperatives, but navigating that bureaucracy requires exactly the kind of institutional capacity a 78-member society lacks.
A Parallel from Kerala — and from Europe
Pune’s experiment isn’t happening in a vacuum. In Kerala, the state government backed a cooperative alternative called She Taxi years ago, targeting women passengers and drivers. While it struggled with technology and funding, it proved demand existed for non-aggregator ride services. More instructively, in Barcelona, Spain, taxi cooperatives have successfully lobbied for regulatory frameworks that limit aggregator dominance, ensuring cooperative-run taxi services retain market share.
Closer to home, PACS (Primary Agricultural Credit Societies) are being reimagined as multi-service centres under a central government plan to strengthen 63,000 PACS nationwide. If urban service cooperatives — like auto-rickshaw societies — could be brought under a similar umbrella, funding, training, and technology support could follow. The blueprint exists. The will is what’s being tested.
The Road Ahead: 2026 and Beyond
Several developments could shape this cooperative’s trajectory. The Maharashtra government has been discussing a state-level cooperative policy refresh that could formally recognise platform-style service cooperatives. NABARD has shown interest in urban cooperative pilots, though disbursement remains slow. On the technology front, open-source ride-hailing platforms — like the ONDC-inspired models being discussed in transport circles — could dramatically reduce the tech barrier for cooperatives.
If this Pune model succeeds in scaling to even 500 members across the city by 2028, it becomes a template. If it stalls at 80-100 members and remains confined to Kothrud, it becomes a cautionary tale about the limits of cooperative enthusiasm without institutional support. I believe the answer lies somewhere in between — and the cooperative movement’s ability to learn from this experiment will determine whether gig workers across India ever get a genuine alternative to platform capitalism.
Back to Kothrud
Raju Shinde, the driver whose earnings had cratered to ₹500 a day, now reports taking home approximately ₹850 on most days. He still picks up the occasional Ola ride during lean hours — he’s pragmatic, not ideological. But his primary bookings come through the cooperative. His daughter’s school fees are paid on time for the first time in three years. That’s not a revolution. But it’s not nothing either. It’s forty people — now seventy-eight — who decided that an algorithm shouldn’t decide what their labour is worth. And in the cooperative sector, that kind of agency is precisely what the movement was built to protect.
If you’re involved in the cooperative sector or interested in how worker-owned models can challenge platform monopolies, I’d encourage you to follow this story closely. Explore more cooperative case studies on IICTF, and consider what your own community could build when people pool resources, share risk, and refuse to accept that the only option is someone else’s app.