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　　Drife CEO and co-founder Firdosh Sheikh is a former Uber power user who has made more than 5,000 Uber rides in total. But after speaking with drivers, she found that many were unhappy with the platform commission Uber was charging, and the opaqueness of the platform's allocation of vehicles. Passengers are also being treated unfairly, she said, with little control over how much they pay for their rides or who they get in.

　　Sheikh believes the problem boils down to a middleman who controls the relationship between passengers and drivers. So she set out to build a decentralized car-hailing platform that would give control back to users through blockchain technology. Last November, after three years of development, she and her co-founders launched the Drife app in the southern city of Bangalore. Today, more than 10,000 drivers and 100,000 passengers have registered on the platform.

　　One of the main differences between Drife and companies like Uber is that they don't charge any commissions, Sheikh said. Drivers can get the full fare and pay a monthly fee to use the platform. However, the company has not yet started charging, because it wants to encourage new users to sign up. "We don't charge any fees from passengers, the ride fares paid by passengers go into the driver's pocket, so there is no room for manipulation on the platform," she said.

　　On top of the base ride fare, which is based on vehicle class and distance traveled, riders can increase the amount they're willing to pay to attract more drivers. Drivers can also bargain, and passengers then choose who to ride based on price or driver ratings. That means pricing is entirely market-driven, and because Drife doesn't take a commission, rides will be cheaper than other platforms, Sheikh said.

　　The company also has its own cryptocurrency DRF. Sheikh said it's not used much at the moment, but the token will play a big role in Drife's expansion plans. The company plans to adopt a franchise model, with local entrepreneurs bidding to operate Drife operations in new cities in exchange for a portion of the subscription fee. But to apply for a franchise, applicants will need to buy a lot of DRF tokens and lock them up for the duration of the contract. So far, the company has received about 60 franchise applications from cities around the world, Sheikh said.

　　About 30% of DRF tokens are also set aside for the "ecosystem fund" to incentivize and reward drivers and passengers. In addition to being tradable for real money, the tokens will give voting rights to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a member-run organization whose internal rules are coded into the blockchain. Each city will have its own DAO responsible for selecting franchisees.

　　Most importantly, users do not need to trust Drife as the entire system will be governed by smart contracts. These are software programs that exist in the blockchain that will automatically execute transactions according to predefined rules that are visible to everyone. “If I say I don’t manipulate it, no one will believe me unless I show them that I don’t have any power to manipulate the data,” Sheikh said, “and that can only be done through blockchain.”

　　In reality, however, Drife is "building a plane while flying it." The company's smart contract system is built on Polygon, an extension of the Ethereum blockchain. But since they're constantly tweaking features and functionality, Sheikh admits that most of the time operations are actually running on a backend server that simulates a blockchain.

　　Many details about how the platform works still need to be worked out. How to ensure the DAO voting system is not dominated by those holding the most tokens is a work in progress, Sheikh said. Most blockchains are also geared towards the settlement of financial transactions, and it’s unclear whether they can handle the vast amounts of real-world data involved in running a large-scale ride-hailing business. Sheikh said: “Any approach we see today can’t scale to the scale we want to grow. That’s why we started working on tailoring the blockchain to our needs.”

　　However, it may take some time before the above question of mass development becomes a reality, as despite the sizeable number of registered users, the company currently only takes about 7,000 rides per week, compared with Uber and Ola's daily rides Up to millions of times.

　　Vinay Piparsania, founder of mobility consultancy MillenStrat Advisory & Research, said that blockchain technology is expected to disrupt the ride-hailing industry and break the monopoly of giants. For startups like Drife, though, the biggest challenge is matching their financial and operational capabilities.

　　“Unfortunately, the current driver-focused startups are too small and fragmented to have an impact on the duopoly power of Uber and Ola,” he said. Pipasania added that these current Companies should focus on “cannibalizing business in some key towns and key categories by attracting and retaining drivers, and showing riders how competitive they are in mobility.”