The ongoing crude oil crisis is testing the limits of India’s ride-hailing economy. The rising fuel costs are squeezing driver margins and hiking commuter fares, driving urban Indians to shared mobility and electric vehicles. Amid this, it seems that India’s mobility space is bracing for a reset
Ripples Of Oil Crisis: The first crack is already visible among drivers, who are demanding fare hikes as operating costs continue to climb. Since fuel accounts for as much as 40% of a driver’s expenses, prolonged crude inflation could compress margins. This would especially hamper the drivers who have acquired their vehicles on loans.
Who Absorbs The Shock? In the short term, drivers could take the biggest hit. However, over time, platforms and fleet operators could be forced to respond with higher fares and revised pricing structures, shifting more of the burden onto commuters. The industry’s challenge right now is that price increase risks weakening demand, even as holding fares flat can hurt supply.
The Bending Demand? Executives believe that the bigger danger from price hike won’t be demand collapse, but behaviour change. Price-sensitive users, especially office commuters and riders in tier-II and III cities, may begin cutting back on cabs and move to metros, buses, bike taxis or pooled rides.
Shared Mobility Pivot: If fare inflation crosses a certain threshold, shared mobility could emerge as the biggest winner. Enterprise transport providers are already looking at route optimisation, pooled employee commuting and shift consolidation to control costs. Consumer ride-hailing, too, may see more carpooling and ride-sharing if fuel prices continue to stay elevated.
The Silent Winner: Besides shared mobility, electric mobility is likely to benefit most from the oil shock, particularly in commercial fleets and two-wheelers where operating economics are already favourable. But even here, bottlenecks related to supply, charging and financing remain.
As India stares at a new model of urban mobility, will ride-hailing stay affordable enough to absorb the oil shock? Let’s find out…
AI-heavy workloads are pushing server density beyond what traditional air cooling can handle. This creates a bottleneck for energy use, sustainability and performance. KuhlTherm is trying to solve this problem with its liquid cooling systems.
The Cool Compute: Founded in 2025, KuhlTherm is a deeptech startup that is focused on high-efficiency cooling for data centres and EV infrastructure. Its core idea is to move beyond conventional air cooling and use liquid-based systems built for the realities of AI and GPU-driven workloads.
KuhlTherm’s Immersion Stack: The startup’s product portfolio includes heat exchangers, immersion cooling modules and control systems. Its rear-door heat exchanger replaces the rack door with a liquid-cooled panel that absorbs heat directly from the server exhaust, allowing cooler air to flow out without requiring hardware changes inside the rack.
Built For AI Workloads: KuhlTherm claims that its system can handle up to 100 kW of heat per rack and support server densities up to 200 kW. That makes it especially relevant for AI infrastructure, where heat management is becoming one of the biggest constraints on scale, efficiency and uptime.
With the global data centre cooling market expected to cross $54.2 Bn by 2034, can KuhlTherm become the thermal backbone of AI data centres?
India’s D2C ecosystem is entering its acquisition era. Legacy giants are aggressively buying digitally native brands instead of building them from scratch. Here is all about it…
Source: Inc42 - Startups
