Where Are India's Women Cab Drivers? Ola, Uber And Rapido’s Claims Vs Ground Reality

It’s 10 pm. I am standing booking a ride on my app, silently hoping for a safe driver. Like most women, I wish there were a simple option to choose a female cab driver, someone who would instantly make the ride feel safer, more so when you hear about an unfortunate cab-linked incident every now and then. That thought became the starting point of a month-long investigation that took me from airport cab counters to insider conversations with Ola, Uber and Rapido drivers to speaking with every major all-women cab service in the country. Two big questions: Where are India’s female cab drivers, as boasted by cab providers? And why are their numbers almost negligible?Most people I spoke to had never once encountered a female driver, despite app platforms

repeatedly highlighting their 'women empowerment' initiatives. The on-ground reality told a very different story.“When I Drive, People Look At Me Like I’m Committing A Crime”“If you get a woman driver, what’s your reaction?” I asked passengers. The answer was always the same - A surprise! Because spotting a female cab driver in India is almost like spotting a rare species.“I cover the windows of my car with black curtains because when people see I am a woman driving, they instantly start gossiping,” says Seema, 34, who has been with Uber since 2018. “Some men deliberately speed past my car to mock me. As if a woman driving is a crime.”

But the judgement starts even before a woman touches the wheel, often from her own family. “It always begins at home,” says Sheeba, City Head for Delhi at Sakha Consulting Wings, an all-women cab service. Through their NGO Azad Foundation, they train women who want to become financially independent. But families are the first barrier. “If she’s unmarried, the family says: ‘Why driving? It’s a man’s job.’ If married, it’s- ‘Who will look after the children?’ Husbands often stop them. When fathers, brothers and husbands never let women use the family vehicle, where will they learn to drive?," Sheeba explains.

Driving, a skill men often acquire informally while growing up, is something many women are actively prevented from learning. And even when they do get trained, society labels them irresponsible mothers or careless wives merely for stepping out to work.Infrastructure on the road only adds to the difficulty. “We don’t have functional women’s washrooms. Men can relieve themselves anywhere. Women can’t. And most public toilets have the men’s side open, but the women’s side locked,” Sheeba says.From Training To Safety: A System Not Built for WomenSo why don’t we see women on mainstream platforms like Ola, Uber or Rapido? Sheeba explains, “The reason is simple. Nobody has trained them. Women drivers make up barely 1–2% of app fleets. Maybe even less.” The big cab-hailing companies do not have a women-specific training pipeline. And their work model, which is designed around 14–16 hour days is structurally incompatible with the lives of women who shoulder unpaid domestic labour.

Uber expects drivers to earn Rs 2,500–3,000 per day, which is only possible through long hours. “No woman can or should work 16 hours. Honestly, even men shouldn’t," adds Sheeba.All-women cab services exist, but most people do not know about them. In a poll of 350 people across major cities, 311 said that they knew no women-led taxi service operating near them. Limited budgets and B2B operations keep companies like Sakha and Taxshe largely invisible in the public consciousness. But even when women do enter the system, many leave largely because of safety issues. Seema has stayed, but not without bruises.“When a customer misbehaves and we complain, the company sometimes says it must be our fault. They temporarily block our IDs without telling us what action they took against the customer,” she says. She points out a loophole. “What if the same customer makes a fake ID? We can’t see their details. How do we protect ourselves?” The lack of transparency and support pushes many women out. “When I joined, many women joined with me,” Seema recalls. “Now almost no one is left.”We reached out to the three biggest players in the industry, Rapido, Uber and Ola to understand why there are so few women drivers and how many they currently have on board. Only Rapido responded: “Yes, Rapido has women drivers across autos and bike taxis, and their participation has been steadily growing, especially in cities such as Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad. A major boost came through our partnership with the Government of Andhra Pradesh in March 2025 under the Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA), through which 1,000 women were onboarded as captains to support their livelihood.” However, the ground reality does not match their claim, sadly.Uber and Ola did not respond to our query at the time of publishing.A Country Full of Women Who Want Independence But No System to Help Them Get ThereAll women's cab service companies also face challenges. Vandana Suri, founder of Taxshe, shares, “Training a woman to become a professional driver takes six to eight months and costs Rs 80,000 to Rs 1 lakh per person. Proper training is expensive.” She further says, “Investors don’t see long training cycles with possible dropouts as viable, so funding is limited. This is a very capital-intensive industry, and funding is the biggest challenge. Across the globe, women-led businesses receive only 2% of private equity funding.”

The Way Forward ...Sheeba and Vandana Suri say India urgently needs affordable training, policy support and real incentives to bring more women into professional driving. Sheeba stresses that without free or low-cost training and basic facilities like safe washrooms, women simply can’t enter or stay in the field. Vandana adds that current government schemes are unrealistic and need a complete overhaul, suggesting education-linked incentives instead. Both agree that big platforms can’t run women-only categories without enough trained drivers — long-term investment in women-led cab services is the only sustainable solution.After weeks of reporting, one truth was impossible to ignore: India does not lack women who want to drive; it lacks a system that allows them to.Families don’t teach them.Training centres don’t exist.Cab companies don’t adapt their model.Infrastructure doesn’t support them.Safety mechanisms don’t protect them.Awareness about women-led services doesn’t reach the public.And so the road quite literally remains built for men. Yet, women like Seema continue to show what’s possible when they fight for their place behind the wheel. Their journeys are stories of resistance, courage and survival, not just rides. The question is no longer “Why aren’t there more women drivers?” The question is, "When will India build a mobility system where they can finally exist?''