MakeMyTrip Acquires Majority Stake In Quick Ride To Enter Ride Pooling

MakeMyTrip has acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based carpooling startup Quick Ride for an undisclosed amount, moving the Nasdaq-listed travel company into ride pooling.

As part of the deal, Quick Ride’s brand and ride-pooling business have been transferred to a newly formed entity, Co Ride Mobility Private Limited, in which MakeMyTrip holds the majority stake.

The Structure of the Deal

Quick Ride’s promoters will continue to lead the business after the transaction. That is a deliberate choice in a services company, where the founding team usually carries the operator relationships.

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The carpooling business moves to Co Ride Mobility. Quick Ride’s erstwhile electric vehicle taxi business stays with its predecessor entity, iDisha Info Labs.

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Splitting the two is sensible. Carpooling is a marketplace business with low capital intensity. EV taxi operations are an asset-heavy business that would drag on a software-led acquisition.

What MakeMyTrip Bought

The company MakeMyTrip has bought was founded in 2014 as Quick Ride by KNM Rao. Its app connects commuters travelling in the same direction, so a rider with an empty seat can carry someone on the same route.

The company also sells an enterprise solution for shared mobility. Its clients include Wipro, TCS, Infosys, IBM and Cognizant, which use it for employee commuting.

Its services run in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kochi, Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata. That footprint matters more than the consumer app, because employee transport is a contracted, recurring revenue line.

Quick Ride has raised over $14 million from investors including Sequoia, Prosus and Venture Highway. Sequoia exited the startup in 2021.

Why a Travel Company Wants Carpooling

MakeMyTrip sells flights, hotels, buses and cabs, and now wants the daily commute, hotels, buses and cabs. Carpooling fills the gap between a bus and a full cab: the daily commute.

That is the one trip a travel platform has never owned. A person books an airport cab a few times a year, but they commute 250 days a year, and the commute is where frequency lives.

MakeMyTrip described the acquisition as complementary to its existing ground transportation portfolio, and said the strategy is to expand into adjacent travel and mobility segments through investments and acquisitions.

The Business Model Question

MakeMyTrip’s own ground transport business already includes airport transfers, outstation cabs and bus bookings. A commute product extends that relationship from occasional trips to daily ones.

For MakeMyTrip, carpooling is a bet that has struggled as a consumer business in India. Ola and Uber both ran pooling products and scaled them back as incentives ate the margin.

The enterprise side is different. A company that pays for employee transport signs a contract, and the platform earns a fee without subsidising every ride.

That is why the corporate client list is the asset here. Carpooling as an app is a hard consumer habit to build; carpooling as an employee benefit is a procurement decision made by an HR head.

What to Watch

Three things will decide whether this works. The first is whether MakeMyTrip keeps the enterprise focus or pushes the consumer app, because the two require different organisations.

The second is how the business is bundled into MakeMyTrip’s existing corporate travel offering, where it could be sold to the same companies that already buy flights and hotels.

The third is regulation. Ride pooling sits in a grey zone in several states, and any rule that treats shared rides as commercial taxi operations changes the unit economics overnight.