The number people quote is ₹200 to ₹500 per duty. Ask what that means and you get a shrug, because a single cut on a single trip genuinely is survivable. The problem is that nobody experiences it as a single cut.
One duty
Take a fairly ordinary airport transfer that a driver cannot serve himself and passes on:
| Line | Amount | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|
| Fare the customer pays | ₹800 | - |
| Broker's cut for relaying the booking | −₹300 | Someone who drove nowhere |
| Fuel and toll for the trip | −₹180 | Pump and NHAI |
| Left for the driver who actually did the work | ₹320 | The driver |
The driver kept 40% of what the customer paid. The person who kept 37.5% made one phone call and forwarded a message.
One month
Now run it forward. A driver who fills eight duties a month through brokered channels - which is conservative for someone working the airport circuit - is paying:
- 8 duties × ₹300 = ₹2,400 a month
- ₹28,800 a year
For context, the drivers we spoke to were quoting monthly EMIs on a Dzire in roughly the ₹14,000–18,000 range. The annual brokerage is close to two months of the car payment. It is not a fee. It is a second EMI paid to a person with no car.
The driver whose diary we worked from had been driving for eleven years. When we finished the arithmetic he was quiet for a while and then said: "Gaadi ek aur aa jaati." - I could have bought another car.
Why the cut survives
It would be easy to write brokers off as parasites, but that misreads the situation. The broker is being paid for something real - he is just being paid for it at an absurd rate.
What he actually provides is reach. He is in fifty WhatsApp groups. He knows who drives an Innova, who does outstation, who is reliable at 5 am. That knowledge is genuinely valuable, and today there is no other way to buy it.
He also provides a thin, informal kind of accountability. If he sends someone who does not turn up, his own name suffers, so he has a reason to filter - which is more than an open group offers.
So the honest framing is this: drivers are paying ₹28,800 a year for a search index and a reputation system. Those are both things software does well and cheaply.
What replaces it
Once you see the cut as payment for reach and memory, the design of the replacement becomes obvious.
- Reach becomes a distance-sorted feed of verified drivers who are actually on duty right now - better than fifty group chats, and instant.
- Memory becomes a public reliability score, mutual ratings, and strikes that follow an account permanently. A no-show costs something now.
- Filtering becomes the poster's own choice from ranked applicants, rather than a broker's judgement you cannot inspect.
Why we refuse to take a percentage
This is the part where a lot of marketplaces quietly become the thing they replaced. Take 10% instead of 37.5% and you can call yourself the driver's friend while still earning more from every expensive duty.
We think a percentage is corrupting for three reasons:
- It gives us the wrong incentive. We would earn more from high-value duties, so we would start nudging the product towards them instead of towards whatever is right for the driver.
- It forces us between you and your money. A commission needs a wallet, escrow and release rules. Suddenly we decide when you get paid.
- It taxes the person who did the driving. Which is the entire thing we objected to.
After the free first month, Dutiess charges an introductory ₹160 a month, 80% off the regular ₹799 price, and takes zero commission on any fare - the same price for a single driver and a fifty-car fleet. We earn the same whether your duty is ₹500 or ₹8,000, which means the only way we grow is by being useful enough that you keep the app installed.
Against ₹2,400 a month in brokerage, ₹160 is a clear saving. One avoided broker cut can pay for about fifteen months.
The full pricing, including the referral scheme that makes months free, is on the pricing page. If our arithmetic does not match your experience, we genuinely want to know - tell us.