BluSmart Mobility, an Indian electric vehicle (EV) ride-hailing platform, recently raised $42 million in a bridge deal that was co-led by its current backers, BP Ventures and Survam Partners. BluSmart Mobility has now solidified plans to increase its current fleet to 10,000 electric vehicles by the end of this year. Since its launch in December 2019, the Gurgaon-based EV firm has added 4,500 electric vehicles to its fleet, with 4,000 in the Delhi-NCR and 500 in Bengaluru.
“After receiving such a positive reaction to our ride-hailing services, we are now eager to expand our presence in Delhi and the NCR. Anmol Jaggi, co-founder of BluSmart Mobility, said to Moneycontrol, “We will also be aggressively expanding in Bengaluru, where we arrived last year and presently have 500 cars commuting there.
He continued, “We are looking to have at least 10,000 e-taxis by year’s end to reduce the waiting time for our riders.” 8,000 of those will be in Delhi-NCR, and 2,000 will be in Bengaluru.
Jaggi underlined, however, that the business would stick to its current business model of leasing the cars and hiring drivers as partners (unlike Uber and Ola, where drivers own cars). The Indian ride-hailing company has already funded Rs 1,200 crore for car leasing and partnered with Mitsubishi, Mahindra and Mahindra Finance, Gensol EV Leasing, LeasePlan, ALD Automotive, etc.
We will be leasing automobiles worth Rs 900 crore in the upcoming months, given that the average selling price of an electric car is Rs 15 lakh and that around 6,000 more cars will be added. By year’s end, the workforce will increase from 6,000 to roughly 13,000, with an average of 1.3 driver partners per car.
Jaggi explained that the company manages to collect Rs 80,000 per month for each vehicle it sources, of which it pays Rs 22,000 as monthly rentals to the leasing companies, when asked how the business will become commercially sustainable.
The first all-electric shared mobility platform in India has travelled around 220 million kilometres and made 6.5 million journeys. On average, each car makes at least seven trips daily. It hopes to exceed the 1 million monthly trips threshold across its fleet in the upcoming three months. The business, however, has no intention of expanding into any new cities in the upcoming quarters.
A sister company of BluSmart Mobility, BluSmart Charge, has spent Rs 85 crore to install 4,300 EV Chargers (rapid and slow) across 25 hubs. Over the following four years, it now intends to invest an additional Rs 800 crore in the installation of 43,000 chargers spread among 250 hubs.
When it comes to granting access to this charging infrastructure to all Delhi and Bangalore residents, Jaggi said, “We are at the final stage of decision-making.”
