Mumbai auto driver loses Rs 8 lakh per month income from side business after he goes viral
Tired of too many ads?
Remove Ads
Not all fame leads to fortune—sometimes, it brings unforeseen consequences. A Mumbai-based autorickshaw driver, once celebrated online for his out-of-the-box entrepreneurial spirit , has seen his thriving venture abruptly shut down. What started as a smart, demand-driven side hustle earning him between Rs 5 to Rs 8 lakh monthly has now ended under the weight of legal and security restrictions.This driver had ingeniously addressed a major gap near the US Consulate in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), Mumbai. Due to strict security protocols, applicants visiting the consulate were prohibited from carrying their personal belongings, including bags, inside the premises. Spotting a unique business opportunity in this limitation, the autodriver parked just outside the building and offered to safely store bags for visa applicants. His service gained popularity quickly, particularly because no official storage or locker facility existed nearby.According to a Hindustan Times report, after the driver's innovative setup gained widespread attention through a LinkedIn post, it attracted not only praise but also scrutiny. The recognition came from Rahul Rupani, a product leader at Lenskart, who highlighted the autodriver's daily routine of serving 20 to 30 clients, generating impressive earnings of Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 per day. Rupani applauded his street-smart business model and noted that his monthly income rivaled that of experienced professionals in the corporate world—despite his lack of formal business training or technical infrastructure.Unfortunately, this burst of attention also reached the authorities. As reports of the operation spread, Mumbai Police quickly stepped in. Officials summoned the autodriver and a dozen others who were offering similar services near the consulate. According to a senior officer from the BKC police station, the operations were in direct conflict with local security mandates. The consulate is a high-security zone, and no parking or unauthorized commercial activity is allowed nearby, especially involving the storage of unverified personal items.The police noted that neither the autodriver nor the others involved had obtained any formal permission to provide storage services. Storing random belongings in such a sensitive area was deemed a potential security threat. As a result, the locker service was promptly terminated, and strict warnings were issued to all individuals involved to cease and desist from restarting any similar service in the vicinity.What started as an inspiring example of entrepreneurial grit has ended in silence. The autodriver's story now stands as a reminder: while innovation can spark success, going viral without legal safeguards can sometimes shut the very doors it opens.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hans India
18 minutes ago
- Hans India
11 out of 21 poll promises fulfilled in 1 year: Dy CM
Berhampur: Eleven of the 21 promises made by the BJP ahead of last elections have already been fulfilled in the first 12 months in office. This was stated by Deputy Chief Minister Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo during a press meet here on Thursday marking 11 years of Central government's service agenda and one year of Odisha's visionary leadership under Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi. 'Our government took concrete steps to fulfil the promises made in the election manifesto immediately after assuming office a year ago. We made four historic decisions within 24 minutes of our first Cabinet meeting including opening all the four doors of Sri Jagannath Temple at Puri, opening 'Ratna Bhandar', setting up a corpus fund of Rs 500-crore and introduction of 'Subhadra' Yojana. We have fulfilled the hopes of the people. Whatever we promised, we would deliver during our present term. We will go to the people, take their feedback and complete the remaining four years', Singh Deo said. On the future agenda, the Deputy Chief Minister said the government is committed to procure a cargo aircraft to export green vegetables and fresh fruits from Odisha. 'We are now exporting vegetables and fruits including strawberry, dragon and other fruits to Dubai and other countries besides Delhi, Mumbai and other places in India which are in great demand. Cargo aircraft can also be a boon for floriculture sector in Ganjam', he said.
Time of India
21 minutes ago
- Time of India
Meta invests in AI firm Scale and recruits its CEO for 'superintelligence' team
By Matt O'Brien Meta said Thursday it is making a large investment in artificial intelligence company Scale and recruiting its CEO Alexandr Wang to join a team developing "superintelligence" at the tech giant. The move reflects a push by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revive AI efforts at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram as it faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI. Meta announced what it called a "strategic partnership and investment" with Scale late Thursday but didn't disclose the financial terms of the deal. Scale said the added investment puts its market value at over $29 billion. Scale said it will remain an independent company but the agreement will "substantially expand Scale and Meta's commercial relationship." Meta will hold a minority of Scale's outstanding equity. Wang, though joining Meta, will remain on Scale's board of directors. Replacing him is a new interim Scale CEO Jason Droege, who was previously the company's chief strategy officer and had past executive roles at Uber Eats and Axon. It won't be the first time a big tech company has gobbled up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them. Microsoft hired key staff from startup Inflection AI, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who now runs Microsoft's AI division. Google pulled in the leaders of AI chatbot company while Amazon made a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept's AI systems and datasets. Wang was a 19-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he and co-founder Lucy Guo started Scale in 2016. They won influential backing that summer from the startup incubator Y Combinator, which was led at the time by Sam Altman, now the CEO of OpenAI. Wang dropped out of MIT, following a trajectory similar to that of Zuckerberg, who quit Harvard University to start Facebook more than a decade earlier. Scale's pitch was to supply the human labor needed to improve AI systems, hiring workers to draw boxes around a pedestrian or a dog in a street photo so that self-driving cars could better predict what's in front of them. General Motors and Toyota have been among Scale's customers. What Scale offered to AI developers was a more tailored version of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, which had long been a go-to service for matching freelance workers with temporary online jobs. More recently, the growing commercialization of AI large language models - the technology behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta's Llama - brought a new market for Scale's annotation teams. The company claims to service "every leading large language model," including from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft, by helping to fine tune their training data and test their performance. It's not clear what the Meta deal will mean for Scale's other customers. Wang has also sought to build close relationships with the U.S. government, winning military contracts to supply AI tools to the Pentagon and attending President Donald Trump's inauguration. The head of Trump's science and technology office, Michael Kratsios, was an executive at Scale for the four years between Trump's first and second terms. Meta has also begun providing AI services to the federal government. Meta has taken a different approach to AI than many of its rivals, releasing its flagship Llama system for free as an open-source product that enables people to use and modify some of its key components. Meta says more than a billion people use its AI products each month, but it's also widely seen as lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google in encouraging consumer use of large language models, also known as LLMs. It hasn't yet released its purportedly most advanced model, Llama 4 Behemoth, despite previewing it in April as "one of the smartest LLMs in the world and our most powerful yet." Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who in 2019 was a winner of computer science's top prize for his pioneering AI work, has expressed skepticism about the tech industry's current focus on large language models. "How do we build AI systems that understand the physical world, that have persistent memory, that can reason and can plan?" LeCun asked at a French tech conference last year. These are all characteristics of intelligent behavior that large language models "basically cannot do, or they can only do them in a very superficial, approximate way," LeCun said. Instead, he emphasized Meta's interest in "tracing a path towards human-level AI systems, or perhaps even superhuman." When he returned to France's annual VivaTech conference again on Wednesday, LeCun dodged a question about the pending Scale deal but said his AI research team's plan has "always been to reach human intelligence and go beyond it." "It's just that now we have a clearer vision for how to accomplish this," he said. LeCun co-founded Meta's AI research division more than a decade ago with Rob Fergus, a fellow professor at New York University. Fergus later left for Google but returned to Meta last month after a 5-year absence to run the research lab, replacing longtime director Joelle Pineau. Fergus wrote on LinkedIn last month that Meta's commitment to long-term AI research "remains unwavering" and described the work as "building human-level experiences that transform the way we interact with technology."
Time of India
24 minutes ago
- Time of India
HCL Tech shares in focus after Volvo Cars picks firm for end-to-end engineering services
HCL Tech shares will be in focus on Friday after Swedish carmaker Volvo Cars selected the Indian IT major as one of its strategic suppliers for engineering services . The deal expands their existing collaboration in digital and product lifecycle management (PLM) to include the delivery of end-to-end engineering solutions at scale. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Air conditioners without external unit. (click to see prices) Air Condition | Search Ads Search Now Undo HCL Tech will support Volvo Cars' engineering initiatives through its automotive Centre of Excellence in Gothenburg, Sweden, along with its global offshore and nearshore delivery centres. The company said the partnership aligns with Volvo's focus on sustainable growth and innovation in future mobility. 'This strategic engagement reflects our commitment to delivering high-performance, future-ready engineering solutions that help shape the mobility of tomorrow,' said Pankaj Tagra, Corporate Vice President at HCLTech for Manufacturing and Allied Industries in Europe. He added that the deal further strengthens HCLTech's position as a strategic engineering partner for global automotive clients. Also Read: SBI, Bank of Baroda among 10 banks that saw NPA decline in Q4 Live Events Volvo Cars aims to deliver mobility that is personal, sustainable, and safe, and the expanded partnership with HCLTech is expected to support this vision. Also Read: KEI Industries, DCB Bank among 10 small-cap stocks analysts expect to gain up to 75% HCL Tech share price performance and outlook According to Trendlyne, the average target price for HCL Tech is Rs 1,664, suggesting a potential downside of about 2% from current levels. Among 44 analysts tracking the stock, the majority have a 'Hold' rating. Technically, the stock's Relative Strength Index ( RSI ) stands at 62.4, indicating neutral momentum. The MACD is at 19.9, positioned above both the centre and signal lines — a bullish signal. HCL Tech shares closed 1.1% lower at Rs 1,702 on the BSE in the previous session, even as the Sensex slipped 1%. The stock has gained 11% in the past three months but remains down 12% over the last six months. ( Disclaimer : Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times)
