Namma Yatri to charge auto drivers subscription fees from September 1

Namma Yatri, which recently took over Rapido as Bengaluru’s third-most popular auto ride-hailing app, will charge drivers a subscription fee from September 1 onwards. 

Launched in November 2022 on the union government’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform, Namma Yatri is operated by Juspay Technologies Pvt Ltd in collaboration with the Auto Rickshaw Drivers’ Union (ARDU). It facilitates about 89,000 trips per day, as against Rapido’s 85,000. Ola and Uber occupy the first and second positions, respectively. 

Namma Yatri has gained popularity because it does not charge drivers any commission. This will change, albeit in a different form, next month. 

Two plans

On August 16, the company launched two subscription plans. Under the ‘Daily Unlimited’ plan, drivers will have to pay Rs 25 per day for any number of rides. The first ride will be free. The ‘Daily Per Trip’ plan will charge drivers Rs 3.50 per trip for up to 10 trips daily. Rides beyond that will remain free. 

In a statement, Namma Yatri said both plans were “fundamentally different from the commission-based model” and offered “substantial savings for drivers compared to traditional aggregators”. 

The company has already enrolled over 35,000 of the 89,573 drivers registered with it, according to the statement. Of them, 7,500 drivers subscribed without the company conducting an active outreach or spending money to attract them, the statement added. 

Shan M S, Chief Growth Officer at Juspay Technologies, said Namma Yatri will not only maintain the fee structure for a year but also consider price reductions.

Namma Yatri currently has 89,573 auto drivers but only about 20,000 of them are available at any given point in time. While it has 17.38 lakh registered users and gets 3.15 lakh searches per day, only one-fourth of them result in actual rides. The app facilitates Rs 1.3 crore worth of transactions per day. 

ARDU’s D Rudramaurthy said the company would pay an 18 per cent GST on the subscription fee.

He hoped that many auto drivers would welcome the subscription plans, saying they were substantially lower than the commission charged by Uber and Ola. 

Karnataka Chalakara Okkoota, backed by the Federation of Karnataka State Private Transport Associations, has accused Uber and Ola of charging auto-rickshaw passengers 20-30 per cent more than the meter fare.

Last year, the High Court of Karnataka stipulated that the firms cannot charge more than 10 per cent.