What Indriver Did Right That Hailo and Similar Apps Didn’t

What Indriver Did Right That Hailo and Similar Apps Didn’t

Most ride-hailing founders study Uber. A more useful study is why one scrappy app spread across hundreds of cities while an early, well-funded rival like Hailo was folded into another company. This guide looks at what inDriver did right that Hailo and similar apps did not, and what it means if you plan to build an inDriver clone for your own market.

The short version is control. Hailo gave riders a faster way to hail a licensed cab at the going fare. inDriver let riders and drivers agree on the fare themselves, kept its commission low, and chose markets where flexible rides mattered. Similar apps built on fixed fares and growth spending found that harder to defend.

I lead mobile at OyeLabs, so I read every ride-hailing story from the build side: what the app does, who it lets decide, and what it costs to run. The company now styles its name inDrive, but I use inDriver here because that is still how most people search for it.

Quick Answer

• Hailo hailed licensed black cabs and expanded to cities on four continents, but it kept losing money and merged into MyTaxi in 2016.
• inDriver lets riders name a fare and drivers accept, decline, or counter, so price becomes a negotiation instead of a fixed output.
• Its founder says inDriver takes about 12% commission and skips driver bonuses and rider discounts, which we could not verify independently.
• It built a presence in nearly 900 cities across regions where cheap, flexible rides matter, then began adding services beyond rides.
• Regulators can push back: the Philippines suspended inDriver in January 2024 over alleged fare haggling.
• A clone copies the bidding loop, but it also needs verified drivers, wallets, zone settings, and local legal review.
• OyeLabs lists inDriver clone packages from $950, but its page quotes several launch windows, so confirm yours in writing.

What Happened to Hailo

Hailo was started in London by three technology entrepreneurs and three taxi drivers, and it launched to passengers in November 2011. The app let riders hail a licensed black cab from a phone, and the team recruited drivers first so that supply would be reliable. By 2014 it reported millions of rides and a network of more than 35,000 drivers, according to a Taxi Point history.

The product worked, but the market moved. The same history explains that UberX undercut metered fares by avoiding many of the rules that bind licensed taxis. It worked only with licensed drivers, so it could not match Uber’s scale or price, and Uber’s far larger funding let it run at a loss for years.

The US push added pressure. Hailo raised $30 million for American expansion and chose to work with yellow cabs in Manhattan, where Uber dominated the pricier town car segment and left Hailo with cheaper rides. It also reported a loss of 21.5 million pounds in 2014 and called itself purposely unprofitable while it invested in technology and marketing.

The end came through a merger. In 2016 Hailo agreed to join MyTaxi, the Daimler-owned ride-hailing company, and the Hailo brand was retired. MyTaxi later became FREENOW. Our reading is that Hailo grew by adding cities and cabs, but it never changed who set the price, and that left it exposed.

Letting People Set the Price

inDriver’s core move is simple. Drivers bid for a passenger’s trip, an algorithm recommends prices based on the origin and destination, and the passenger picks from the bids. Drivers can accept, decline, or counter with another offer. Rest of World notes that, unlike Uber, Lyft, and Didi, inDriver does not automatically match passengers and drivers. That moves price discovery from the company to the people in the ride.

The economics follow from that design. Founder Arsen Tomsky told Rest of World that inDriver takes about 12% commission and does not set the fares. He also said rivals hold fares down with driver bonuses and rider discounts, while inDriver avoids both. That is the founder’s account, not an audited figure, but it contrasts sharply with Hailo’s description of itself as purposely unprofitable in 2014.

Drivers also get real choice. Tomsky says they can skip fares without penalty and filter out offers they consider too cheap, and he describes drivers as small entrepreneurs. In our analysis, that matters for supply quality, because a driver who picks trips is less likely to resent the platform than one dispatched to a fare they dislike.

There is a counterpoint. Rest of World also reports that some drivers say they are often forced to agree to lower fares, so choice on paper is not always choice in practice. A bidding app has to guard against a race to the bottom, which is why recommended-price guidance and fare controls belong in the first version of any build.

Choosing Markets Uber Had Not Won

inDriver was founded in Yakutsk, Siberia, and now operates in nearly 900 cities across Central Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere, according to Rest of World. It has almost 3,000 people in 28 offices, and it entered Southeast Asia more recently, where it is active in six countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. That is a spread of many cities, not one big fight.

Hailo’s market bet looked different. Its US effort centered on Manhattan and yellow cabs, the most contested ground in ride-hailing, where Uber already led the premium segment. In our reading, Hailo chose the strongest competitor’s home ground with price-capped supply, while inDriver built across many cities where local price sensitivity gave a bidding model room to grow.

inDriver also stretched beyond rides. Tomsky wants to add food delivery, groceries, and financial products. The company has launched financial services, entered groceries in Pakistan, and is testing dark stores in Kazakhstan through an investment in Ryadom. For a builder, the lesson is to design the app so new services can sit beside rides later.

Also Read: 7 Markets Where an InDriver Clone Has Better Chances Than Uber

Hailo and Similar Apps vs inDriver

The table puts the two approaches side by side, using only what the sources above report. Where a source is silent, the cell says so, and where a cell is our reading, it is marked with a dagger.

The pattern is hard to miss. Hailo and similar apps tried to improve a regulated product, while inDriver redesigned the price mechanism itself. That is the difference a clone is meant to capture, and it is also where the new risks come from.

Where the Model Gets Tested

On January 23, 2024, the Philippine transport regulator LTFRB suspended inDrive’s operations pending a complaint hearing. Its chairman said the suspension responded to alleged haggling of fares, which he called a breach of the terms of inDrive’s accreditation as a transport network company. The company was given 15 days to present proof of compliance, according to GMA News.

Cost and insurance are another test. Tomsky told Rest of World that inDrive launched in Miami in 2023 and left in 2025, because operating in the United States was too expensive, largely because of insurance. The same report says some drivers complain about lower fares. A bidding marketplace has to solve regulation, insurance, and driver pay, not only the app.

My advice is to treat rules as a product input. Ask which fare rules apply in each target city, whether negotiated fares are allowed, and what insurance a platform must carry. Then scope zone-level controls in the admin panel, so that bidding, fare bands, and extra fees can differ by city when the law differs.

Business Model Canvas for an inDriver-Style App

A canvas shows how the lessons turn into a business. The grid below describes a ride-hailing app built on rider-set fares and driver bids. Items marked with a dagger are our inference, and unmarked items follow the capabilities on OyeLabs’ product page or the sources cited here.

Read the canvas from the value proposition outward. Every block depends on the same promise: the rider and the driver agree on the price. Commission, subscriptions, and priority listings are only ways to charge for a marketplace that works, so test whether bids convert into trips before you tune revenue.

Two blocks carry the most risk. Cost structure hides insurance and compliance, which pushed inDriver out of Miami according to its own CEO. Key partnerships include the regulators and advisers who decide whether negotiated fares are allowed at all. A plan that treats them as afterthoughts is a plan for a suspended launch.

From Lessons to Product Features

OyeLabs’ inDriver clone is a white-label taxi booking app with fare bidding and parcel delivery, built on Flutter, with rider, driver, and admin surfaces and web, iOS, and Android versions. The table maps each lesson from this guide to what the page lists and what you should still confirm.

The page lists three packages: OyeStart at $950, OyePro at $1,650, and OyeElite at $4,500, with support periods, update periods, and white-labeling differing by package. OyeStart keeps OyeLabs branding. I would read the package table line by line, because the right tier depends on whether you need your own branding and multiple environments.

Two cautions from my own read of the page. It quotes several go-live windows, from 3 days to 10 days in different places, so get the timeline in your quotation. It also says OyeLabs has no association with inDriver or the other brands it mentions, and it does not name a payment gateway or mention right-to-left layouts, so confirm payments and Arabic support during scoping.

Mistakes to Avoid When You Copy inDriver

The easiest way to copy inDriver badly is to copy the surface. The mechanism works because several choices support each other, and removing one of them weakens the rest. These are the mistakes I would flag at the start of a scoping call for any bidding marketplace.

• Copying the name or brand instead of building your own identity.
• Launching in every city at once instead of proving one zone.
• Turning on bidding without checking local fare rules.
• Leaving out recommended-price guidance and letting bids race to the bottom.
• Skipping driver verification to onboard faster.
• Buying growth with discounts you cannot sustain, the pattern Hailo’s losses warn about.
• Ignoring insurance costs, which shaped the Miami exit.

The common thread is discipline. Tomsky frames the model as fewer subsidies and more choice for the two people in the ride. A builder who keeps that discipline, and proves one city before the next, copies the part that actually mattered.