Ten years ago, getting across Dhaka meant flagging a CNG, arguing about the fare and hoping for the best. Today, millions of people open an app instead. Ride sharing has become one of the biggest parts of Bangladesh's gig economy, and it is still early.
This is the story of how it grew, what went wrong, and why the next decade will look very different from the last one.
The numbers at a glance
- Market size: ride sharing is the largest segment of Bangladesh's gig economy, estimated at $259 million in 2023 and expected to reach $1 billion within five to seven years (The Daily Star, 2024).
- Motorbikes: Bangladesh had about 4.3 million registered motorcycles by January 2024, around half of all vehicles registered in Dhaka (The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune).
- Mobile money: there were 239 million MFS accounts in January 2025, with about Tk 1.72 trillion moving every month (Bangladesh Bank via The Financial Express).
- Connectivity: about 136 million internet subscriptions in mid 2026, most of them mobile (BTRC).
- The cost of traffic: Dhaka's congestion was estimated to cost Tk 56,000 crore in 2020, about Tk 153 crore every single day (BUET Accident Research Institute).
That last number explains everything. When sitting in traffic costs a city that much, anything that moves people faster has a market.
2016 to 2017: the motorbike revolution
Ride sharing arrived in 2016. Within months, motorbike rides became the breakout product. A bike can weave through Dhaka traffic in a way no car can, and it costs a fraction of the price. By March 2018, the leading local app alone reported over 100,000 drivers and about a million users.
Regulation followed quickly. The Ride Sharing Service Guidelines 2017 were issued at the end of 2017, requiring companies, drivers and vehicles to be enlisted with BRTA, with GPS tracking and an SOS feature on every trip.
2018 to 2019: growth, and the first cracks
Ride sharing became a real income source for hundreds of thousands of people. Students, office workers after hours, and full time drivers all joined. But as growth slowed, platforms raised their cut.
By 2019, commission had become the defining issue. In October that year, around 7,000 of 12,000 active drivers on one global app in Dhaka joined a strike against a 25% commission, demanding 12% (The Financial Express). Similar protests followed in 2021.
2020: the pandemic stop
On 26 March 2020, BRTA suspended ride sharing for COVID. Cars returned in limited numbers in June. Motorbike rides stayed banned until September, almost six months without income for many drivers.
2021 to 2025: the quiet move offline
When rides came back, something had changed. Drivers who had paid 15% to 25% on every trip started a simple workaround: they parked at busy corners and offered rides off the app, agreeing a price on the spot. Locally it is called khep.
For drivers it meant keeping the whole fare. For riders it meant no tracking, no record of who was driving and no support if something went wrong. Reports in 2024 and 2025 described informal bargaining overtaking app based booking in parts of Dhaka, and of 15 registered ride sharing companies only a few kept their licences active (Dhaka Tribune, UNB).
Read that again, because it is the most important lesson of the decade: when platforms take too much, drivers leave the platform, and riders lose their safety.
What the rest of the region learned
Bangladesh is not alone.
- India: Rapido moved to a zero commission model in 2023 and 2024, where drivers pay a small daily fee instead of a cut of every fare. Other platforms followed for autos in 2025.
- Indonesia: in May and July 2025, thousands of drivers protested, demanding that the commission cap fall from 20% to 10%.
- Southeast Asia: super apps that combine rides, delivery and payments kept consolidating, because one app that does everything wins daily habit.
The direction is clear across the region: lower commission, more services, one app.
2026: the reset
This is where we come in. Arohon was built on what the last ten years taught us:
- Keep the driver whole. A flat 2% commission, plus a ৳3 safety charge and a small booking fee. On a ৳100 trip, the driver keeps ৳90. There is no reason to go offline when the app takes almost nothing.
- Show the fare first. Upfront prices end the argument at the door.
- One app for every way Bangladesh moves. Bike, EV bike, CNG, car, micro and Hiace, plus parcels, food and medicine, rentals, airport rides and ambulances.
- Beyond Dhaka. Intercity trips between all 64 districts, and drivers already joining from every division.
What comes next
Here is where we think ride sharing in Bangladesh is heading over the next five years.
- Fair commission becomes the standard, not the exception. Drivers now know a low commission app is possible. The platforms that keep charging 15% to 25% will keep losing drivers to the street.
- Rides bring people back online. When the app costs drivers almost nothing, riders get their tracking, safety and support back.
- Electric two wheelers go mainstream. EV bikes are cheaper to run and already price below petrol bikes. On Arohon, EV rides are 21% to 24% cheaper than a regular bike.
- The super app wins the day. The app you use to get to work will also send your parcel, bring your medicine and book your Eid trip home.
- Growth moves outside Dhaka. Chattogram, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna and district towns are where the next ten million riders will come from.
The first decade of ride sharing in Bangladesh was about getting people to try an app. The next decade is about building one they can trust, at a price that works for everyone in the car.
We are building it. Come along for the ride.
Sources
- The Daily Star, gig economy and Uber impact report (2024)
- The Daily Star, "How Bangladesh became a motorcycle nation" (2025)
- Dhaka Tribune, informal bargaining overtakes app based ride sharing (2025)
- The Financial Express, Uber driver strike in Dhaka (2019)
- Bangladesh Bank MFS data via The Financial Express (2025)
- BUET Accident Research Institute via Dhaka Tribune (2020)
- Rest of World, Uber commission in Bangladesh (2023)