Everyone from the Bay Area to Bangalore is talking about whether we are in a technology funding bubble or not. I think that misses the bigger question in India of whether the Indian government might have an effect on it. I woke up this morning and saw an article that Vijay Chibber the secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has stated that companies like Ola and Uber must be registered with the state government like any other taxi operator. Vijay refers to Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act which states that the state governments have jurisdiction.
Ola has raised just under Rs. 6,660 crore in funding and employs thousands of people and that is most likely going to come to a screeching halt if the government has its way. Registering with the government is not the issue but existing taxi’s are registered and it’s pretty clear no one likes the existing system. How many times have people been refused a ride from a taxi driver? How many times has the taxi driver driven like he was in an F1 race? How many times have you stepped into a taxi and the floor board has rotted and you can see through? Yup, I’m sure all of us have faced this issue.
This issue goes back to my disconnect with Modi. He will travel all around the world and meet with enthusiastic entrepreneurs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk but back at home…
Well back at home, we are back to square one with the “license raj” of yesteryear. The central government has punted on the issue and has let each state government frame the guidelines for the taxi app aggregators like Ola and Uber. This just means more work for Ola and Uber in dealing with each state government – oh, what joy for them! And, in states like Maharashtra they may impose a cap on the number of taxi’s that an operator can have, because that’s how we roll in the license raj era. VC funding meet Indian Government regulators, you may have met your match.
celestri - virtual home of manish jain 