Ride-hailing app puts social justice in drive
A lot of tech companies talk about impact in terms of scale or profit. Ride-hailing platform inDrive is talking about justice.
The world’s second most downloaded mobility app recently launched “Positions of Purpose,” a global hiring campaign to recruit senior leaders in the areas of child protection, education and good governance. It’s an unconventional move that brings the company’s founding mission — challenging injustice — into the executive ranks.
The company made its name by disrupting ride-hailing with a fairness-first model that lets drivers and riders negotiate fares directly with consumers. Now it’s extending that same principle of transparency to how it hires. inDrive founder and CEO Arsen Tomsky says the new campaign is about “building the leadership capacity to deliver impact at scale.”
The campaign centers around three executive-level roles: Global Director of Family-Based Care in Child Protection, Global Director of Education Policy and Systems Strengthening, and Global Director of Impact Governance and Public Policy. Each is positioned alongside a traditional leadership position in growth, product and operations, signaling that social impact is as central to the business as financial performance.
Operating in some 1,000 cities across 48 countries, inDrive has a mission of positively impacting 1 billion people by 2030. Its 70-person impact division runs programs focused on areas including education, women’s entrepreneurship and air quality. The latest campaign is the next step in that aim to embed social priorities directly into how the company makes decisions.
The move comes as employers try to translate values into action, even as precious few have made social justice roles part of the org chart. The situation is even more challenging considering the current political and cultural winds whipping against social justice initiatives. Yet, inDrive’s determination is a signal that purpose is still a priority to many employers.
The inDrive campaign invites candidates from both corporate and nonprofit backgrounds, offering remote-eligible roles with competitive pay. The company is promoting the effort on LinkedIn and Meta.
For employees, that positioning matters. Numerous studies from the likes of Deloitte and McKinsey suggest that workers, particularly younger workers, who see their employers as valuing the same things they do are far more engaged and loyal. By elevating social roles to senior leadership, inDrive is institutionalizing that sense of mission, making purpose part of the retention strategy, not just the brand story.
Founded in Yakutsk, Russia, as a response to what was seen as unfair taxi pricing, inDrive grew out of a grassroots belief that fairness should guide commerce. Now headquartered in California, it’s applying that same belief to leadership itself.
“Positions of Purpose” could become a case study in how companies weave justice into their operating systems — not through slogans but through structure. As Tomsky puts it, “We can’t challenge injustice only in our marketplace; we have to challenge it in how we lead.”