The Rise and Fall of BluSmart: How Anmol Jaggi's Contrarian Vision Met Corporate Governance Reality
In 2005, a petroleum engineering student interning at Reliance Industries was trying to sell gas to paper mills in Madhya Pradesh when he stumbled upon something called carbon credits. Twenty years later, that same student had built what appeared to be India’s only profitable electric ride-hailing company by doing exactly the opposite of what every venture capitalist advised. But by April 2025, BluSmart’s operations were suspended, salaries went unpaid, and regulators had barred its founder from India’s capital markets.
The collapse of Anmol Jaggi’s electric mobility empire offers sobering lessons about the difference between brilliant strategy and sustainable execution, between innovation and governance, and between contrarian thinking and fundamental business hygiene.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Meteoric Rise: From College Dorm to Public Markets
The transformation began with numbers that validated Jaggi’s unconventional approach. Gensol Engineering, the renewable energy company he founded in his college dorm, went public in 2019 with a market cap of just ₹100 crores. Within three years, it had exploded to a peak valuation of ₹1,700 crores, with share prices rocketing from ₹62 to ₹1,900.
“We did an IPO as a very small company. Our listing market cap was just 100 crores. Very happy Gensol today is about 16, 1700 crore business. So public market says that it’s not me who’s saying that.”
This financial success wasn’t just validation; it was the foundation that enabled Jaggi’s most ambitious bet. By 2019, armed with credibility from Gensol’s performance and deep domain expertise in renewable energy, he co-founded BluSmart with what seemed like a counterintuitive strategy: building an asset-heavy ride-hailing company when the world was obsessed with asset-light platforms.
The Contrarian Logic That Almost Worked
While Uber and Ola burned billions trying to replicate Silicon Valley’s playbook in India, Jaggi identified fundamental arbitrage opportunities hidden in plain sight. The mathematics were compelling: driver partners were accessing capital at 18-20% interest rates while BluSmart could borrow at 8-8.5%. Electric vehicles offered a 5:1 cost advantage over petrol. Most critically, he understood that India’s market dynamics made the Airbnb-style sharing economy model ineffective.
“In India, there is nothing known as there are enough number of cars because the car ownership is just 20 people, 20 cars per thousand people. More importantly, you cannot run a white number plate car on a ride hill. So driver partners had to specifically buy yellow number plate cars to run on ride hill platforms.”
The insight was profound: if drivers were taking on debt to buy dedicated commercial vehicles anyway, why not capture the financing arbitrage directly? BluSmart’s approach seemed to solve the fundamental problems plaguing Indian ride-hailing: unsustainable unit economics, poor service quality, and driver exploitation.
The Operational Excellence That Masked Deeper Issues
By 2024, BluSmart’s customer-facing metrics suggested the contrarian strategy was working brilliantly. The company achieved a 4.9 out of 5 app store rating, the highest globally for any ride-hailing service. Customer acquisition costs of just ₹40 compared to industry standards of ₹1,500-2,000. Zero discounts, zero surge pricing, yet customers chose BluSmart repeatedly.
“That 250 rupee trip became thousand rupee trip. Now what is the fault of the person who is going from his office to his home? That guy might be earning one lakh rupee salary, today for just going back to home, the person is spending thousand rupees, which basically is opportunistic profit tearing on somebody’s bad situation.”
The no-surge policy and service quality weren’t just customer-friendly marketing - they were enabled by the fundamental economics of fleet ownership. With 8,500 electric vehicles, 1,300 charging stations, and 1.2 million monthly trips, BluSmart appeared to have cracked the code that had eluded global giants.
Revenue grew from ₹160 crore in FY23 to ₹390 crore in FY24. Jaggi claimed the company was approaching breakeven, a remarkable achievement in an industry where market leaders had burned tens of billions without reaching profitability.
The Innovation That Couldn’t Overcome Governance Failures
Jaggi’s most innovative contribution was creating what he called “SaaS for cars” - six-hour vehicle leases that eliminated driver capital requirements while ensuring optimal fleet utilization.
“This is where we have actually now brought in what originally was the Uber concept that if you have spare time, come and drive. Because in India, the unutilized asset is manpower.”
The model attracted high-quality drivers including MBA graduates and engineering students, solving both the capital access problem and service quality challenges. The six-hour rotation eliminated charging downtime while ensuring drivers always had fully-powered vehicles.
But behind the operational excellence lay a fatal flaw: the interconnected corporate structure that enabled rapid scaling also created systemic vulnerabilities that regulators would eventually exploit.
The House of Cards Collapses
In April 2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) delivered a devastating blow that revealed the true cost of Jaggi’s interconnected business empire. The regulator barred both Anmol and Puneet Singh Jaggi from India’s securities markets, alleging the diversion of ₹400 crore from Gensol Engineering’s ₹977 crore loans that were meant for BluSmart’s vehicle purchases.
According to SEBI’s findings, while ₹567 crore was legitimately used to purchase 4,704 electric vehicles, over ₹400 crore was either unaccounted for or diverted to personal use, including the purchase of luxury real estate. The investigation revealed a pattern of fund misappropriation that struck at the heart of BluSmart’s operational model.
The regulatory action triggered a cascade of failures. BluSmart suspended all ride bookings, extended refund windows from 6 days to 90 days, and delayed salary payments to employees. Key executives including CEO Anirudh Arun, CFO Tushar Garg, and CTO Rishabh Sood exited the company. The monthly cash burn of ₹20 crore became unsustainable as funding dried up.
The Market Opportunity That Remains Unfulfilled
The irony of BluSmart’s collapse is that the market opportunity Jaggi identified remains as compelling as ever. India’s electric vehicle market, valued at $8.49 billion in 2024, is projected to reach $101.4 billion by 2030 - a 40.7% compound annual growth rate. The ride-hailing sector is expanding from $950 million in FY24 to an expected $3.77 billion by FY32.
Government policies including the PM E-Drive scheme and FAME subsidies continue accelerating electric vehicle adoption. Battery costs have fallen 85% in the past decade, from $1,200 per kilowatt hour to $130-150 today. Tesla’s planned $2-3 billion investment in India manufacturing validates the long-term potential of the electric mobility transition.
But opportunity alone doesn’t guarantee success. BluSmart’s collapse demonstrates that innovative business models and operational excellence cannot overcome fundamental governance failures and financial misconduct.
The Rescue Attempt and Uncertain Future
As of late 2025, BP Ventures, BluSmart’s largest investor, is in advanced negotiations to buy out Jaggi’s 25.14% stake and revive operations. The proposed restructuring would involve writing off portions of existing debt, injecting fresh capital, and completely removing the Jaggi brothers from company operations.
If successful, the rescue would preserve the jobs of BluSmart’s 10,000+ driver partners and potentially validate the underlying business model. But it would also mark the complete exit of the visionary founder who created the contrarian strategy that made BluSmart possible in the first place.
The broader Jaggi empire faces similar pressures. Gensol Engineering’s market cap has crashed 95% to just ₹177 crore, with shares trading at ₹37 compared to the peak of ₹1,900. The company faces insolvency proceedings from IREDA over ₹510 crore in loan defaults. Credit rating agencies have downgraded Gensol to ‘D’ indicating default risk.
The Cautionary Lessons for Indian Entrepreneurship
BluSmart’s rise and fall offers crucial insights that extend far beyond electric mobility. The story illustrates how brilliant strategic insights and operational excellence can be completely undermined by governance failures and financial misconduct.
“I would say that is all need of the day, need of the hour. If you needed more projects, then of course you need marketing team. If you’re not able to file your tax returns in time, then you of course need a finance guy. So all of those have been very organically.”
Jaggi’s organic, need-based approach to building organizations worked during the growth phase but failed to establish the systems and controls necessary for sustainable operations at scale. The interconnected nature of his business empire, which enabled rapid resource deployment and capital efficiency, became a systemic vulnerability when regulators investigated fund flows.
The most sobering lesson is that in India’s evolving regulatory environment, corporate governance is not optional or secondary to business strategy. As markets mature and oversight intensifies, founders who built businesses in earlier, less regulated eras must adapt their practices or face the consequences.
The Unfinished Revolution in Indian Mobility
Whether BluSmart ultimately survives under new ownership or becomes a cautionary tale, Jaggi’s core insights about Indian mobility markets remain valid. The asset-heavy model’s superior unit economics, the importance of service quality differentiation, and the potential for electric fleet ownership to create sustainable competitive advantages are all worth emulating.
But future entrepreneurs building in this space must learn from BluSmart’s governance failures. Sustainable businesses require more than innovative strategies and operational excellence. They demand robust financial controls, transparent corporate structures, and ethical leadership that can withstand regulatory scrutiny.
India’s electric mobility future will still be built by entrepreneurs who understand both technology transitions and local market dynamics. But it will be built by those who combine Jaggi’s strategic insights with the governance standards necessary to create truly sustainable enterprises.
The rise and fall of BluSmart serves as both inspiration and warning: brilliant contrarian thinking can create extraordinary opportunities, but only disciplined execution and ethical leadership can transform those opportunities into lasting value.
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