Known for letting riders and drivers negotiate fares, inDrive spent the past year adding businesses such as advertising and groceries to its core ride-hailing service. Now the Uber rival is scaling those bets, installing new leaders as its ads, delivery, and financial-services businesses show early signs of traction across its largely emerging-market user base.
Piloted in July 2025 and rolled out to its top 20 markets in January, inDrive’s advertising business has since expanded to 25 markets, serving more than 2 billion impressions and attracting over 2,000 paying advertisers a month, the company told TechCrunch. About two-thirds of those advertisers are repeat customers.
The Mountain View, California-based firm, which operates in over 1,200 cities across 48 countries, sees an opportunity to build an advertising business around an audience that can be harder for brands to reach through other platforms, Andries Smit, inDrive’s chief growth business officer, said in an interview.
“We’re in very clear emerging markets. Our segment is very different, and we can really help brands connect with a new audience in a different way,” Smit told TechCrunch.
inDrive is now pushing what it calls “Ride Media,” which is designed to capture passengers’ attention while they wait for a driver and during a trip. The company can currently target users based on places they have visited over a specified period, though it plans to add real-time targeting capabilities.
