Mumbai Cabbies – Interesting Insights!

I was on my way back from a meeting and like any normal day I hailed a black and yellow cab. I usually speak with the drivers about general topics – because its interesting to get to know different view points on topics on which I generally have hard opinions about – politics, traffic policemen, cricket…the works.

This particular guy  – Mohan, happened to be very chatty and spoke a lot about his life. Here is a an extract of the chat we had – a very high likelihood that the data might be inaccurate since this wasn’t exactly a SEBI report – but had some interesting insights. This is an extract of that conversation, an interesting one at that, which I thought Ill share here. 

 1)   He needs to earn more than 1000 – 1200 rupees in his typical shift

1500 ke upar ho gaya to chaandi.

2)   His shift times are mostly around 12 hours everyday. 

Sir, 12 ghante se jyada hum kaam nahi karte hain! Bacche gussa hote hain!

3)   He starts at 7 in the morning and works till about 7 or 8 pm depending on the business.

4)   If he earns less than 1000-1200 each then its basically breakeven or negative

5)   This is because his costs are quite a few:

1. CNG cost  – Around INR 300 per day
2. Food – Around INR 50 per day (his own sustenance – not family)
3. EMI for Car: Around 500 each day (Need to match this with the other numbers he mentioned. I haven’t done the math)
4. Repair cost – variable 100-200 averaged out daily.

Gaav bhi bhejna padta hai thhoda paisa

6)   With the above, if he makes 1200+ everyday then he is safely ‘in the green’ for that day.

7)   The car – he bought on loan for around INR 3L

8)   Our ‘regular’ banks don’t provide loans to him because his documents are not in place

9)   So he has to take loans from some other ‘co-operative’ banks. These guys know they are taking a lot of risk so they charge a higher interest rate. 18% is what he mentioned!!! (Not sure of the exact rates) . And of course, these rates are not uniform; they take a look at the person and decide. So his car emi is his biggest operational cost, because of the high interest. He basically pays back interest in the first 2 years and then closes the rest in the remaining 3. Again, I’m not doing the actual math here. Numbers might change.

10) The above is just the operational cost of the taxi.

11) Other expenses include:

1. Medical Expenses
2. Children’s Education
3. Money back home for his family
4. Rental for his place / EMI for his place

12)  He has to go through hell and back to secure a permit for his car. Getting permits has its own set of haggles. You need to have residence proof of more than 15 years (basically to confirm that you have been in Mumbai for more than 15 years) , other docs to support the above, licence etc

13)  Assuming he has been living here for 15 years, there was no way for him to lay his hands on documents that old. (He had no place to stay – let alone store his documents).

14)  So…enter your friendly neighborhood “Document-agent-man”. Agent-man has super powers. He can produce your 15 years of documents, which even you don’t have. But unlike Spiderman, he needs INR 6,000- INR 10,000 for his super powers to sustain.

15)   Next is his licence. So there is another super hero who gets you licenses again at a cost. He didn’t mention how much. 

Jaane do saab, sochke bhi tension aata hai

16)  Now he had his license, and his documents and other stuff. Now for the permit.

17)  The permit is basically a lottery, apparently. You apply (with a fee of course) and then pray to the permit-gods that they rain on you. But these Gods are gods of chance as well. You may or may not get the permit. If you don’t get the permit, you don’t even see your money back.

18) All the above, provided you have your documents in place.

19) After all this, he submits the license and the other docs, to realize that the birthdate has been incorrectly printed on his licence (long time back – which he neglected then). This data doesn’t match with some computer data that the permit people (or some other people – I lost him a bit here) have. So all the computer does is throw an error saying “Can’t be accepted”. No details about what needs to be done.

20)  So this guy then goes about getting everything checked and corrected – which is additional cost, time and resources.

21)  In the end – he does get a permit. Which is valid for “x” number of years. After which he needs to reapply.

22)  Of course this is for his black-and-yellow car. The permit doesn’t allow him to use his car with an Ola or with other private cars (I’m unaware of the details – this is what I hear from him). So he cant work with them and has to rely on himself for business.

23) Good part is – after all this he was extremely happy about one thing: He was the master of his life. He wanted to run the car his way. He wanted to own the car and not work for someone. His car was in great condition. He was polite and smart – and knew his numbers. (Better then what I have put in this blog, cause I didn’t note them down then) He knew his breakeven time -5 years he said, to breakeven with his car EMI. Then everything after that was his own. He knew his competitors like Ola, TabCab and was happy to do what he was doing. 

He was working hard. Knew his goals. Was willing to put in extra effort to be his own boss. And was happy at what he did. Which is more than we can say for many of us!

Follow me @shwaytaj

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If you enjoyed this read, read about rodinhooder Rajesh Autowala

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