mumbai a sudden shut down in march and a staggered unlocking of businesses and travel since then has dealt a body blow to the 10 billion rs 73600 crore cab market in india including appbased shared mobility providers such as uber and olathe lastmile transport industry is set to lose about a third or almost rs 25000 crore of its annual turnover in the ongoing fiscal 2021 according to people tracking the industry thousands of operators are expected to go out of business and hundreds of thousands of drivers and other workers are likely to lose their livelihood merely 20 of the market is organised the rest including auto rickshaw operators are largely scattered and unorganised advt the trips that a cab does a day are still only around 3050 of the precovid average in several markets this is also after losing the business for almost a quarter unlike other businesses revenue lost cannot be recovered and it is going to lead to tens of thousands of cabs being repossessed by financiers in the coming months according to people tracking the sectorthere are close to 2 million cabs and an equal number of autorickshaws plying in india as many as 200000300000 drivers may already be out of job or on the verge of thataccording to people in the know about 800000 drivers were registered under the appbased shared mobility providers in the last six months that number has come down by 200000300000 with business at just 2030 of the normal levels they saida loan book of rs 10000 crore is under threat due to closure of operations by these driverpartners the people saidwith socialdistancing becoming the order of the day and personal mobility gaining speed it is a long hard road to recovery for lastmile public transport providersthe travel and hospitality business has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic at best the lastmile market is likely to come back to 5070 if the market recovers quickly said people tracking the sectorconsolidation is already underway the large operators and small operators may survive these unprecedented times but it is the midsize operators who have a sizeable fleet and a decent workforce on payroll that are the worst hit said an executive from the industry advt a cab driver needs rs 5000070000 a month to meet his fixed expenses with his earnings now dropping to rs 2000025000 or less he is struggling to meet his obligations of emi driver salary maintenance etcalready the likes of ola and uber have written off rs 45 billion since their entry into india and a similar amount may have to be infused againola and uber did not respond to emails seeking commenta spokesperson for cab aggregator meru said the business was back to merely 3040 of precovid levels and the company was hoping to touch 70 in the next couple of quarters that expectation is based on hope that a vaccine would be discovered and unlocking would bring back the users in the marketwhile