Ride-hailing firm inDrive plans to add 5,000 to 11,000 more drivers

MANILA, Philippines — Ride-hailing service provider inDrive is targeting to onboard around 5,000 to 11,000 new drivers in the Philippines this year, further boosting its capacity to serve passengers in a country where the market demand for this transportation service remains strong.

inDrive Philippine country Manager Vanessa Taqueban on Thursday said they are hoping to recruit 30 percent to 40 percent of the 60,000 individuals that have been issued permits by the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

Mark Tolley, Indrive regional director for Asia Pacific, said they currently have around 13,000 drivers operating in the Philippines under their platform to date from the time they launched operations in June 2024.

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“Our focus coming to the Philippines was let’s launch our business, let’s get our business model out to the people where we can really bring a new ride-hailing opportunity into the market,” Trolley told reporters during a roundtable discussion in Makati.

“We run on a very nice model where we make our rides fair and transparent for our passengers,” he added.

Aside from racking up around 13,000 drivers, inDrive has also managed to grow their active app users to 25,000, doubling the number in a span of nearly seven months.

Aside from expanding the number of their drivers this year, Trolley said they also intend to add more payment choices aside from the cash and GCash options for the benefit of passengers.

He mentioned that the next step is to include payment options for credit card and debit card users.

“We fully expect to have these adoptions across all payment types. I think it’s [inevitable and it’s great for customers to kind of make those choices,” he said.

inDrive is currently only servicing passengers in Metro Manila and Cebu, with the firm still looking at plans in branching out to key cities in the Philippines.

Tolley said that they are also not ruling out the possibility of venturing into motorcycle taxi services and delivery services in the future.

“Right now, our focus is cars, right? Our focus is increasing the number of riders that we have and being able to offer that to our passengers,” Tolley said.

“(Motorcycle services) is something, again, we’ll always kind of look at that as we should do within this industry. But for now our focus is cars,” he added.