The platform economy skipped most of Bharat
India's gig and platform economy is projected to involve over 23 million workers by 2030, yet the headlines centre on metro delivery riders and app-cab drivers. The auto-rickshaw driver in Solapur or the taxi operator in Jalgaon largely sat out this boom. National aggregators either ignored these cities entirely or entered with metro-grade commissions and English-first apps that did not fit. The digital divide here is not about owning a phone — most drivers have one — but about whether any platform was built for how they actually work.
What digital exclusion costs a tier 2 driver
Without a platform, a local auto driver depends entirely on stand queues, walk-up fares, and a personal phone-book of regular customers. Demand is invisible and lumpy: hours of idling broken by sudden rushes he cannot meet, with no way to reach a rider two neighbourhoods away who needs him right now. He has no digital reputation, no booking history, and no record to show a lender for a vehicle loan. The cost of exclusion is not just lower income but a complete absence of the data trail that unlocks credit and growth.
Onboarding the driver who already exists
Depo's approach inverts the aggregator playbook: instead of importing an outside fleet, it onboards the auto and taxi drivers already serving a city. Sign-up is in the local language, runs on a basic Android phone, and keeps the driver's existing stand and customer relationships intact rather than dissolving them. Commissions are deliberately low so that joining adds income without eroding the thin margins these drivers run on. The platform extends a driver's reach across the city instead of replacing the network he spent years building.
From invisible labour to a digital track record
Once a driver completes rides through the app, something new appears: a verifiable record of trips, earnings, and ratings. That track record is the raw material for formal credit, vehicle financing, insurance, and access to government schemes that informal workers are usually shut out of. For a driver who previously had no documented income, a few months of platform history can be the difference between a loan rejection and an approval. Digitising the work also digitises the worker's economic identity.
Why closing this divide is also the business
This is not philanthropy bolted onto a startup; the inclusion is the moat. A platform that genuinely serves local drivers earns dense, loyal supply that metro apps cannot replicate, which translates directly into reliability for riders. Every driver Depo brings online deepens the city's coverage and makes the next rider's experience better, creating a flywheel rooted in the local economy. Closing the tier 2 digital divide and building a defensible business turn out to be the same task.