How Cash Ur Drive is building an advertising layer on India’s new transit infrastructure

The out-of-home company is selling advertising on surfaces that carried none five years ago, and public infrastructure spending keeps adding more of them.

New Delhi [India], September 30: Until recently, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, battery swapping bays, public bicycle shelters, and electric buses carried little or no advertising. Cash Ur Drive Marketing Limited (CUDML or CASHurDRIVE) now holds commercial advertising and media rights across these four asset classes, without owning the underlying infrastructure. During FY26, the Company secured a ten-year municipal EV-charging concession, a Punjab state bus agreement and a regional transit mandate.

The backdrop is a medium that has quietly stopped being static. India’s out-of-home (OOH) segment grew 13% in 2025, and digital out-of-home (DOOH) now accounts for 18% of segment revenue against 7% in 2023, according to the FICCI-EY media and entertainment report published in March 2026. The report expects out-of-home to reach ₹ 85 billion by 2028, with digital formats at roughly a quarter of it.

The gap, by management’s account, is that the company is not bidding for the same sites. A hoarding has been a hoarding for thirty years and is fought over accordingly; an electric bus depot commissioned last quarter has never carried advertising at all. CASHurDRIVE describes itself as a concept house that monetises new-age infrastructure: it bids for media rights from state transport undertakings, municipal corporations and charge point operators on tenures of three to ten years, then designs the format, installs it and measures the audience. “We do not buy buses, build charging stations or lay metro lines. The transport undertaking funds the bus. The charging operator funds the hardware. The municipality funds the shelter. We fund only the media layer that sits on top of them,” said Mr. Raghu Khanna, Chairman & Managing Director.

The estate reflects that. Owned media runs across more than 25 cities and covers advertising rights over 1,900-plus buses, roughly 500 EV charging stations in six cities, 19 battery swapping stations in Chandigarh, 95-plus digital screens, over 350 public bicycle shelters, and a Delhi and Chandigarh static portfolio of 716 units. Transit media contributed 44.84% of FY26 revenue and outdoor and urban infrastructure media 49.19%. Seventeen years in, more than 2,000 clients have used the network, about a hundred active during FY26.

The shift that matters commercially is from reselling inventory to holding it. Revenue from owned media rose from ₹ 26.50 Cr in FY25 to ₹ 59.07 Cr in FY26, against ₹ 2.4 Cr as recently as FY23, and now makes up about a third of the total. Most of the year’s activity pushed that way. The company won a ten-year design, build, finance, operate and maintain concession from Nagar Nigam Rishikesh covering ten EV charging stations with advertising rights, secured a Letter of Award for Pune city bus advertising, signed an exclusive agreement with Punbus covering more than 1,200 state buses, and acquired 50% of charging operator CharjKaro Greentech Mobility and about 19.06% of Kolkata Call Taxi.

Public policy is supplying much of the new inventory. The Centre’s PM E-DRIVE scheme, a ₹ 10,900 crore programme now running to 2027-28, supports 14,028 electric buses across nine cities and carries ₹ 2,000 crore for public charging infrastructure, according to the Ministry of Heavy Industries. India had 29,151 public charging stations at December 2025, close to six times the 2022 count, on ministry data cited in a Rubix Data Sciences report. Charging bays hold a driver for twenty to forty minutes, longer than any roadside format manages.

The annual report filed this month showed Revenue from Operations of ₹ 186.67 Cr and Profit After Tax of ₹ 29.40 Cr for FY26 on a Standalone basis, up 33.98% and 64.93% respectively. Fixed assets stood at ₹ 8.20 Cr against total income of ₹ 192.38 Cr. The company listed on NSE Emerge in August 2025 and had deployed ₹ 49.26 Cr of the ₹ 58.10 Cr fresh issue as of 30 June 2026.

The build is not finished, and the report does not pretend otherwise. Utilisation of owned inventory ran at about 45% in FY26 against an industry norm the company puts nearer 65%, roughly 73% of revenue still comes from Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, and operating cash flow stayed negative as some ₹ 20 Cr went into advances to concessionaires for long-duration rights. Stated plans include lifting utilisation towards 60%, adding around 350 charging stations in Delhi NCR, and moving into South India, more Tier-II and Tier-III cities, and formats it does not yet hold: metros, trains, airports and railway stations. Those are intentions, and the report offers no forecast.

“A person leaves home at eight in the morning and gets back at ten at night. In between there is a bus, a shelter, a cab, a charging bay, a metro platform, a hoarding at the crossing. Our ambition is to be present, usefully, across the whole of that journey.” – Mr. Raghu Khanna, Chairman & Managing Director, Cash Ur Drive Marketing Limited