Anton Shingarev joined inDrive in December 2025 to head up public affairs. With over a decade of experience in the tech industry, and a background as an adjunct professor of politics at University of Texas in Austin, his role is to guide inDrive’s engagement with regulators and governments in the markets we serve. We spoke to him about the rapidly evolving landscape that mobility companies must navigate, and how inDrive tackles the challenge of working across 47 countries – all with different regulatory environments.
After more than six months with inDrive, what has surprised you most about the company?
Realizing just how deeply inDrive’s mission to challenge injustice is ingrained in the company’s decision-making.
In fact, this is one of the reasons I joined the company. My course at the University of Texas is about the regulation of tech companies and I really do think about this a lot. When the digital industry was just taking off, everyone believed, myself included, that it was a pure blessing for humanity.
A couple of decades later the risks became clear, and governments around the world started taking a serious interest in regulating them. And it's an important question: how do you balance the pace of economic and technological growth on one side with a company's responsibility to society on the other?
I believe that this question is an especially key one for our industry to address. Historically, there has been tension between pricing transparency vs affordability for gig economy platforms, but inDrive has shown me that there is another way to run a ride-hailing business. The company’s peer-to-peer pricing model is built on transparency, and our socially-committed approach is really important to me personally – and to the wider communities where inDrive operates. This way of doing things also resonates with what many regulators across our 48 markets are looking for.
What are regulators focused on right now?
Regulators across geographies are taking different approaches to regulating ride-hailing companies, as they search for the best and most locally relevant solutions.
Issues like commissions charged by ride-hailing companies, labour rights, companies’ operational transparency and fair market competition are top of mind for most regulators we speak with.
The ride-hailing sector emerged through leveraging tech innovation to provide a more convenient on-demand transportation service. However, commission rates of 30% and above don’t seem like a fair deal for drivers, who are the core of this industry. Ensuring fairness for both riders and drivers is central to our mission. So, our commission ranges around 10%, and is the lowest among our competitors.
In addition, governments have realized that millions of people taking on gig work – in ride-hailing, courier services or food delivery – need social protections alongside the flexibility of the job. This is the conversation happening in Mexico, Brazil and a few other countries right now, focusing on labour reform, and inDrive is part of this dialogue.
Another big issue is so-called algorithmic transparency. Regulators have noted the negative impact of surge pricing on consumers: when prices suddenly double or triple without a clear reason. So price transparency is also a very important discussion topic with regulators. Because inDrive’s model is built on transparency, it enables drivers and riders to agree on a price that’s acceptable to both of them.
In addition to clearer and more transparent pricing, our peer-to-peer negotiation model has been shown by recent surveys to allow many drivers to take on more work and boost their earnings, while at the same time unlocking mobility in underserved areas.
Some 64% of riders and drivers in Latin America, 65% in Egypt, 64% in Morocco and 59% in Pakistan said they completed more trips because of fare negotiation, according to a 2026 Oxford Economics research report published in January.
Zooming in on Latin America, 55% of riders said that inDrive was more affordable than other platforms, while 66% of drivers said price negotiation helped them earn fairly. At the same time, approximately half of respondents said fare negotiation helped them access trips in underserved or hard-to-reach locations.
The strength of our pricing model has enabled inDrive to benefit from word-of-mouth recommendations, foregoing heavy subsidies that other ride-hailing companies have traditionally relied on to gain market share. Once these subsidies stop, drivers’ incomes can decrease sharply, causing shocks in the local market. This issue is also on the radar of industry regulators.
Then there’s the fact that classic ride-hailing companies use incentives in the first couple of years to attract more drivers and gain market share. Then the subsidies end, and there is no way back. Drivers are happy for the first few years, but after that they have a serious long-term problem, as the incomes they have come to rely on diminish.
Overall, I believe that inDrive’s model really supports us as a business; it resonates well with what regulators are trying to achieve in the countries where we operate.
Have you found it possible to have an open dialogue with regulators?
It's absolutely possible to maintain an open dialogue with regulators, although we sometimes have to deal with residual distrust from market practices from other tech companies.
But once they understand our business model, they see that it works. Regulators in several markets have told us they value a more competitive landscape. We met with a regulator from a Southeast Asian country who confirmed that they don't like the overly aggressive approach of some companies, which aims to eliminate all competition; so they appreciate our business model and are pleased to work with us.
In the countries where we operate and with regulators whom I have personally met, the attitude is generally positive. Overall, they find inDrive’s model more fair and more respectful towards riders, passengers and the community at large.
Recent independent research like the Oxford Economics report I highlighted earlier reinforces the value that inDrive’s peer-to-peer model brings users. It shows there’s an uplift in mobility across our core markets of operation with all the benefits this entails – more access to opportunities, and more business for drivers.
The study also found that around 75% of inDrive trips involve negotiated fares (rising to ~80% in Latin America and the Middle East), highlighting that people are using this feature and finding it genuinely worthwhile.
These are all helpful proof points for our conversations with regulators. But it’s really our model that tends to win people over.
For example, peer-to-peer pricing is not yet permitted under current rules in Thailand, but after a green light from the regulator we have launched a pilot in Phuket, demonstrating that this business model is beneficial for customers and drivers. For the people of Thailand, it means lower prices, more flexibility, and ultimately, more money staying in the national economy. For drivers, it means more flexibility and higher incomes. The regulators trusted us, and the pilot was so successful that we scaled it to Chiang Mai, with other provinces to follow.
What is your take on working in regulatory “grey areas” where local governments haven’t yet adopted specific regulatory standards around ride-hailing?
I think that we are in a historical moment when governments realize that they need to address some important questions in ride-hailing. This is especially the case in developing countries, some of which have no regulation yet in this area.
So we’re taking a proactive approach, talking to regulators across different countries, trying to help define the rules that balance industry growth with important social considerations.
Does regulation look similar globally or is it very location-specific?
Some elements are similar across the globe, but political and social systems, as well as societal attitudes towards social benefits, are very different country by country.
Overall, it’s expected that platforms have permits to operate, ensure safety and provide some benefits to the people using them. Some regulators are also discussing instituting a cap on commissions. Brazil is the biggest, most developed economy that is seriously considering capping commissions charged by ride-hailing companies because people are starting to realize that a 50% take rate is absurd
How are you building strong relationships between your team and the regulators ?
If you are open, transparent and consistent in what you do, people trust you, you trust them and everyone benefits. So, building trust and making sure we don’t do anything that compromises it is very important to us.
In the markets where we operate, generally the relationship between inDrive and regulators is one of cooperation. I saw this first-hand in the Philippines and in Malaysia, and it's what I hear from my team in other geographies. This doesn’t happen by accident – it’s something we work on continuously. For example, in Kazakhstan, inDrive recently organized its first Safety Roundtable with government officials. We brought together the Ministry of Transport, the Transport Prosecutor's Office, industry representatives and NGOs, and presented the key safety features of our ride-hailing and intercity services.
Our business model really supports these relationships and helps us explain: this is our commission, that is what we earn, these are the rules on our platform, this is how we operate. It helps regulators to understand that this is really the way we operate, so our transparency naturally supports our government relations. inDrive is a business that earns money, but we do it in a fair way.
