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‘Freedom nahi tha’: Cab driver quits ₹40,000/month IT job, doubles his earnings
A cab driver who left his IT job for self-employment now earns ₹80,000-90,000 monthly, claiming more freedom.
A Gurgaon-based entrepreneur has shared a video of his encounter with a cab driver, sparking a conversation about the freedom of being self-employed versus the job security that comes with being a salaried worker. Akash Gupta, founder and CEO of EV rental platform Zypp Electric, recently came across a man who quit his IT job to drive a cab and doubled his earnings in the process.
Gupta filmed his conversation with the cab driver as he sat in his car. In the clip, he was heard questioning the driver about his earnings and cheering for him as he revealed that he now earns between ₹80,000–90,000 per month.
Quitting IT job
The video appears to show Gupta initiating the conversation by asking the driver: “Aur kitna kamate ho aaj kal? (How much do you earn these days?)”.
“Ho jata hai 80-90 ka mahina,” the driver replies, indicating that he earns between ₹80,000 to 90,000 per month.
Further conversation with the driver also revealed that he used to be a salaried employee with an IT job that paid him ₹40,000 per month. Asked why he quit, the driver replied: “Freedom nahi tha (there was no freedom)”.
When the founder of Zypp Electric asked the cab driver whether he now has freedom, the driver replied in the affirmative.
He then told Gupta that he had worked for 19 years in an IT job before quitting to become a self-employed cab driver. The driver revealed that his wife now owns her own beauty parlour.
The video ended with Gupta congratulating the driver on his success.
Video goes viral
The video has collected over 4.3 million views in just one day, along with hundreds of comments.
In the comments section, many viewers praised the driver, but others noted how driving a cab is not easy.
“80k me se 20k ka petrol lagta. 3-4k maintenance. Yearly tax 40k around. Din bhar car chala k exertion alag se. Clutch daba daba k legs ki halat kharab (Out of his ₹80,000 earnings, ₹20,000 goes to petrol every month. ₹3,000 to 4,000 is spent on maintenance. Yearly tax is another ₹40,000. The exertion of driving every day on top of all this. Plus, constantly pressing the clutch hurts the legs),” one viewer pointed out.
“It’s not that easy to earn 80,000 to 90,000,” another agreed.
"It's way better than dropping emails for permission to take leave,” a viewer countered.
(Also read: ‘Gig entrepreneur’: Man earns ₹1 lakh driving cab after quitting ₹25,000 job)
