Vehicle Partner Terms

Who this is for

These terms apply to you if you own a vehicle and attach it, or want to attach it, to the Om Travels fleet, whether that is one vehicle or several. They are separate from our Website Terms of Use and from a customer’s Booking Terms & Conditions: those govern our relationship with a customer, and this page governs our relationship with you as the owner of a vehicle we allocate duties to.

Attaching a vehicle does not mean joining Om Travels. It means you continue to run your own transport business, on your own vehicle, under your own registration and permit, and you agree to make that vehicle and a driver you put forward available for the duties we offer, to the standard set out on this page. What you do with the vehicle when it is not committed to one of our duties, and how you run the rest of your business, stays yours to decide.

Where you attach more than one vehicle, each one is assessed and held to this standard on its own record: its own documents, its own condition, its own duty history. Nothing on this page treats several vehicles under one owner as a single unit for the purpose of a lapsed document or a missed duty.

Nature of the relationship

Om Travels is operated by Om Taxi Service, a proprietorship, trading as Om Travels. Attaching your vehicle to our fleet makes you an independent contractor to us, for the duties we allocate to that vehicle. It does not make you or your driver our employee, and it does not make us a joint operator, a lessee or a co-owner of your vehicle.

You are the registered owner and permit holder of the vehicle and you remain responsible at all times for its lawful operation, its insurance, its roadworthiness and the conduct and employment of its driver. We allocate duties; we do not become the owner or the employer.

In practice, that means neither side owes the other what an employer owes an employee. You do not draw a salary from us, and neither you nor your driver is entitled to provident fund, ESI or any other employment benefit from us on account of this attachment; whatever you owe your own driver as his employer is between the two of you and stays your responsibility, not ours. We do not set your hours outside a duty, and we do not direct how you maintain your vehicle beyond the standard on this page. This arrangement is not exclusive unless you and we have separately agreed that it is: how you use your vehicle, and who else you work with, when it is not committed to one of our duties, is yours to decide.

Your tax position, whether you are registered for GST, and any licence or registration your own transport business needs beyond what is listed on this page, are matters for you and your own advisor. Attaching a vehicle to our fleet does not change who is responsible for them, and it does not make Om Travels a party to your dealings with any tax authority on your own account.

The reason the clause above is worded the way it is: responsibility follows ownership and control. You own the vehicle, you hold the permit in your name, and you choose and employ the driver, so you are the one in a position to keep it insured, roadworthy and lawfully operated. Our part is to allocate a duty to a vehicle that meets our standard, and to pay you once it is done. Keeping those two roles distinct is what makes this an independent-contractor relationship rather than something else, with a different name and a different set of obligations attached.

Mandatory vehicle documents

Before a vehicle is attached, and for as long as it stays attached, we hold a current copy of each of the following for it, and each one exists for a reason beyond satisfying a checklist:

Registration certificate (RC)

This is the legal record of who owns the vehicle and what class it is registered for. We check it against the name the vehicle is attached under and against the permit below, because a vehicle registered as a private car cannot lawfully be run as a paid passenger vehicle, whatever else is in order.

The relevant permit: an All India Tourist Permit under the All India Tourist Vehicles (Permit) Rules, 2023, or, for a vehicle running only within one state, the applicable state or contract-carriage permit

A permit is the legal authority to carry a paying passenger on a given kind of journey, and the two kinds cover two different journeys: an All India Tourist Permit is what lets a vehicle cross a state line on an outstation duty, and a state or contract-carriage permit is what lets it operate lawfully within one state. Running a duty without the permit that duty actually needs is an offence under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and it risks the vehicle being stopped and impounded mid-duty, with a customer still in it.

A valid fitness certificate

A fitness certificate is issued only once the vehicle’s brakes, tyres, steering, structure and emissions have actually been inspected. A lapsed one is not a paperwork gap: it means nobody has confirmed, since it expired, that the vehicle is safe to be on the road, and that is a genuine risk to the people sitting in it. We will not put a vehicle forward on an expired fitness certificate, however sound it looks.

Comprehensive motor insurance covering the vehicle and its passengers

Cover of this kind is what stands between an accident and a bill that lands on you personally. It also underwrites the indemnity you give us under Insurance and liability below: that clause depends on your cover being genuinely in force at the time it is called on, not on a certificate that has since lapsed sitting on our file.

A valid Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate

A current PUC certificate is a legal requirement for any vehicle on the road, and it is also a rough check that the engine is running as it should. A vehicle carrying an expired one is liable to a fine at any check post, on any duty, whether or not that duty happens to be for us.

Proof that road tax is paid and current

Road tax is what keeps the vehicle lawfully entitled to ply in the state it is registered in. Left to lapse, it can mean the vehicle has no legal standing to be on the road at all until the arrears are cleared, and that is a risk we are not willing to put a customer, or you, in the middle of.

We work from copies for day-to-day allocation, but we may ask to see the original of any of these when we inspect the vehicle, under Audit and inspection below.

Mandatory driver documents

Every driver you put forward to drive on our duties needs a current copy of each of the following with us before he can be allocated one:

A driving licence in the class the vehicle requires

The licence class has to match the vehicle: a licence that covers a private car does not extend to a transport vehicle carrying paying passengers. Driving without the correct class is unlawful in itself, and it is also the kind of gap that can leave the insurance on the vehicle unable to respond if something goes wrong.

A police verification certificate

A customer puts her safety, and often her family’s, in the hands of a driver she has never met. Police verification is the basic check that makes that reasonable, and it protects the driver too: it is what lets us stand behind him when a customer asks who is coming to collect her.

Address proof

This lets us actually locate and reach the driver, which matters in an emergency and matters if a dispute over a duty ever needs following up beyond a phone call.

A recent photograph

It lets the office, and where needed the customer, confirm that the person who turns up for the duty is the driver who was verified and named against it, and not somebody else sent in his place.

A conduct agreement, signed by the driver

This is what binds the driver to the standards Om Travels sets for a duty, even though you, not us, are his employer. It is published in full in our Driver Terms at /partners/driver-terms.

This is checked again at intervals through the driver’s time on our panel, not only when he first joins: a licence or a police verification can lapse quietly, and we would rather catch that ourselves than find out about it the way you would not want us to.

Keeping documents current

Our standard is straightforward: a vehicle whose permit, fitness certificate, insurance or PUC has lapsed, or a driver whose licence or police verification has lapsed, is not put forward for a duty until the document is renewed and a current copy is with us again. This is how we keep every duty we allocate lawful, for you, for your driver and for the customer sitting in the vehicle. Renewing a document before it lapses, and sending us the renewed copy, is your responsibility; we will not allocate a duty against an expired one.

This is a rule the allocation system itself enforces, not a judgement call somebody on our side makes on the day, and that is deliberate. It works in your favour as much as anyone’s. An oversight is easy: a fitness certificate due for renewal in a busy week, a PUC that lapses while a vehicle is on the road every day and nobody stops to check. A system that will not allocate a duty against a lapsed document catches that oversight before it becomes something worse, an accident with cover that has technically expired, or a vehicle stopped at a checkpoint mid-duty with a customer inside it and no valid permit to show. Caught early, it costs you a duty. Caught late, by an inspector or an insurer instead of by us, it costs a great deal more.

It also protects something that belongs to the whole fleet and not only to you: a customer’s confidence that every vehicle allocated to her booking has been checked to the same standard. If a duty could be allocated on an expired document whenever someone judged the risk acceptable just this once, that standard would mean nothing, for you or for any other partner on the panel. Nobody on our side, including us, can override it for a convenient morning or a favoured partner. That is what makes it a standard, applied the same way to every vehicle on the panel.

If a renewal is genuinely delayed for a reason outside your control, tell us. We will not allocate a duty against a lapsed document regardless, but knowing why helps us plan around it rather than being surprised by it on the morning a duty is due.

Vehicle standards

A vehicle attached to our fleet is of a reasonable age and in sound mechanical and cosmetic condition for the class of duty it is offered on: a vehicle fit for a short local run is not automatically fit for a long outstation duty, and condition is judged with that difference in mind rather than by one single rule for every class.

It is clean inside and out for every duty, carries a working seatbelt for every seat we sell, and displays a no-smoking decal. These are not decorative requirements. A seatbelt that does not work is a safety failure dressed up as a minor defect, and a no-smoking decal is what lets a driver decline a request without being the one who has to argue about it.

A customer who books an outstation duty from us does not know, and should not need to know, which of our partners’ vehicles she has been allocated. What she experiences is Om Travels, whichever vehicle turns up. That is why this standard applies evenly across every vehicle on the fleet: the vehicle a customer happens to get on any given duty should be, as far as she can tell, no different from any other, and every partner’s vehicle carries some responsibility for that being true.

Duty allocation

We offer you a duty with its route, its reporting time and place, and the vehicle class it needs. Once you accept a duty, your vehicle and driver are committed to it: accepting is not a soft expression of interest, it is an undertaking that this vehicle, with this driver, will be at the stated place at the stated time.

A duty is offered to a vehicle whose documents are current and whose class matches what the duty needs, for the reasons set out under Keeping documents current above. Once you accept, do not commit the same vehicle or driver to other work that would conflict with it.

The reporting time matters more than it might look on the page. A customer relying on an airport transfer has a flight to catch; a wedding duty is built around a schedule fixed months in advance and not moved for a late car. If you accept a duty and then do not report for it, without a reason we accept as genuine and told to us in good time, we treat that as a serious matter: it counts against your standing with us and is grounds for suspension or de-panelling under the terms set out later on this page.

Duty slips

Every duty is recorded on a duty slip: the opening and closing odometer reading, the opening and closing time, and the customer’s signature at the end of the duty. It is filled in at the time, from what the vehicle actually shows, not reconstructed afterwards from memory.

The duty slip is the one record both sides can point to after the fact, and an accurate one protects you as much as it protects us. If what you are paid is ever questioned, it is the duty slip, closed and signed at the end of the duty, that settles what actually happened: the kilometres actually run and the time actually spent, not what was estimated when the duty was offered. An accurate entry is your own evidence that the duty was performed as described, and it is what stops a dispute over payment from coming down to one person’s word against another’s.

The same record protects the customer, and through her, the fleet’s standing: it is what stops a duty being billed for more than it actually took. An odometer reading that has been altered, or a time entered loosely rather than read off the clock, weakens the very record you would want to rely on if a dispute ever did arise, whichever direction it went in.

Payments

Your payment for a duty is calculated from the duty slip once it is closed and verified, at the rate set out in your partner agreement with us. That rate, and the cycle on which you are paid, are agreed with you individually because they vary by vehicle class, route and the terms you have settled with us, and neither is published on this page.

A deduction against what is due to you is made only for a specific, stated reason, such as damage you are responsible for or a shortfall verified against a duty slip. You are told the reason and given the chance to explain your side before it is made, not informed of it after the fact as a line item.

Where a duty slip and your own record disagree, the duty slip closed and signed at the end of the duty is what we work from. That is the practical reason an accurate entry at the time matters more than it might seem to on a quiet day.

Insurance and liability

Your own insurance on the vehicle is the primary cover for anything that happens to it, to its driver, or to a third party, while it is on a duty for us. You indemnify us against any claim, loss or liability arising from the vehicle or its driver, including a claim brought by a customer or a third party.

In plain terms: if a claim is made against us because of something to do with your vehicle or your driver, an accident, an injury, damage to property, and we end up paying it, you are the one who ultimately bears that cost, not us. This is why the insurance requirement earlier on this page matters in practice and not only on paper: adequate, current cover on your vehicle is what actually stands behind this obligation when it is called on.

This is the ordinary way risk is allocated where the person who owns, controls and staffs a vehicle is not the same person who allocates it a duty. You carry the risk that comes with the vehicle and the driver you have put on the road, because you are the one in a position to manage it: you choose the driver, you maintain the vehicle, you keep the cover current. We are not thereby a co-insured on your policy, an operator of your vehicle, or vicariously liable for what a driver you employ does on it. Our part is limited to allocating the duty and paying you for it.

If a claim does arise, we expect the same reasonable cooperation any insurer would: documents, a statement of what happened, nothing beyond what is ordinarily asked of a vehicle owner or a driver after an incident.

Data protection

How we collect and use your data and your driver’s data, including verification records, is set out in our Vendor, Driver & Partner Privacy Notice at /legal/partner-privacy-notice.

This covers the documents you give us under Mandatory vehicle documents and Mandatory driver documents above, and any record we make of an inspection or an audit under Audit and inspection below.

The customer-contact rule

This applies to every duty we allocate to your vehicle, and to every driver you put on it:

A driver must not solicit a direct booking from any customer to whom we have allocated him, and must not retain or use a customer’s contact details for any purpose other than performing the duty. Breach is a material breach and results in immediate and permanent de-panelling.

The reasoning behind this is bigger than any one booking. A customer who books through us does so because we have verified the driver, priced the duty against our own tariff and stand behind it if something goes wrong: that is what she is actually buying when she books an Om Travels duty rather than hailing a car off the street. If a driver could quietly take her number from that first duty and book her directly the next time, at a price and to a standard nobody has checked, that trust is broken without her ever knowing it happened. From where she sits, nothing looks different: the same driver, apparently the same service.

It is not only that one booking that is at stake. Every duty we allocate to your vehicle depends on customers trusting that a booking made through Om Travels stays with Om Travels, checked, priced and accountable, rather than quietly becoming a private arrangement the moment a driver has the number. If that trust broke down, it would not cost only the driver who broke the rule. It would cost every other partner and driver on the panel whose duties depend on the same trust holding. That is why breach of this rule ends the relationship immediately rather than being treated as a first offence to be warned about.

It also matters as a data question on its own account: a customer’s phone number is given to us, and through us to a driver, for the purpose of that one duty. Holding on to it and using it for anything else is a use of her personal information she never agreed to, on top of being a breach of this page.

Audit and inspection

We may inspect your vehicle and its documents, and audit your duty slips, on reasonable notice, to confirm that what is attached to our fleet matches what we hold on file.

In practice, that means checking the vehicle against the standard set out under Vehicle standards above, checking the documents on the vehicle and with the driver against the copies we hold, and reconciling a sample of duty slips against what was actually paid out on them.

Caught during an inspection, on reasonable notice, a slipping standard or a document about to lapse is something you have the chance to put right before it becomes a suspension, or worse, an incident on the road that an inspection would have caught first.

Suspension and de-panelling

We may suspend a vehicle from duty allocation, or de-panel it from the fleet altogether, where a document has lapsed and is not renewed within a reasonable time, where a duty is accepted and not reported for, where an inspection finds the vehicle does not meet our vehicle standards, or for a breach of these terms, including the customer-contact rule above.

The two are different in kind, not only in degree. Suspension is temporary and reversible: the vehicle stays attached, it simply is not offered a duty until whatever caused the suspension, a lapsed document or a standard not met, is put right, and it goes back on the allocation list once it is. De-panelling ends the attachment altogether, and it is what follows a breach serious enough that we are not willing to allocate this vehicle a duty again, the customer-contact rule above being the clearest example of one. Suspension ends once the reason for it is resolved. De-panelling does not.

Where money is owed either way at the point a vehicle is suspended or de-panelled, it is settled against the vehicle’s duty slips up to that point.

Wherever practical, we tell you the reason before we act, and where a document or a standard is what is in question, you have the chance to put it right before we do.

If you have a concern

A concern about a duty, a payment, an inspection finding, or how you have been treated as a partner goes through the same route published for everyone at /grievance-redressal. Write to us, call us, or send a WhatsApp message, and it is looked into properly rather than settled on the spot over the phone.