[ad_1]
You are reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Coming from a business background, he was expected by Blusmart co-founder Punit Goyal to take over his grandfather’s business, a plastics and mat business commonly known as Chhatai in Indian households. I was there. But instead of joining his family business, he not only started his own venture, but reverse-engineered it into an environmentally friendly fleet, the exact opposite of the plastics realm his family business was in. I have decided. His first business was PLG Clean Energy. It had the initials of his grandfather’s name on it. Currently, startup founders are trying their best to raise funds from investors and believe that it is the right way to do business in the new era.
At the BluSmart Gurugram headquarters, the co-founders were late for a scheduled meeting. Fifteen minutes later, he rushed into the conference room and apologized for keeping me waiting because he was busy with an important investor meeting. As I was excitedly writing this article, it was announced that the startup had raised another round of funding, this time close to Rs 200 crore. Here, the London School of Economics and Aston graduate outlines how he combines his passion for economics with EVs for success.
Blusmart is a fully integrated, 100% electric ride-hailing and charging service. And that creates a virtuous cycle for our entire business of ride-hailing and charging, which is intertwined with technology.
start
Punit started exploring the idea for BluSmart in April 2017. Punit is a serial entrepreneur and has founded three solar power companies in the past. From 2008 until his 2012, he was manufacturing solar panels and exporting them to the European Union. At the time, Europe was a big market for solar power. India was not open to setting up solar power projects. And in his second avatar, he founded a company that builds solar power plants. It was then that he met his co-founder Anmol Jaggi. At the time, Anmol was working with third parties to build solar power plants. Punit’s second company, PLG Photovoltaic, is an independent power producer/developer building solar power plants in Gujarat, and an EPC contractor, Gensol (Anmol currently manufactures EVs). BluSmart (which continues to operate in parallel with BluSmart) built the solar power project. In record time for them. Punit ran this project for two years and sold the company for $68 million. Before that, his previous manufacturing plant also generated close to 110 million euros in revenue in his first four years from manufacturing solar panels. The third venture was a 70 MW solar power plant, again in Dhule, Maharashtra, which was sold to Suzlon. After spending his decade building solar power projects, Mr Punit was keen to further invest in the renewable and sustainable sector.
Speaking about how he came up with the idea for BluSmart, Punit says, “The idea of BluSmart came about. “In 2017, he went to the US to see what was happening next in the world. And that’s when he learned about the EV field.” Interestingly, he went to his Google campus I went there and saw solar panels and a charging station to charge the EV. And that’s when he first had the idea that the market opportunity for his EV could be ripe in the coming years.
Sharing further, he said: “I also happened to meet the Hyperloop people at the same time and I was on my way to meet the Hyperloop team when I saw that big tunnel where the pods were going so fast. .Sharvin Pishevar. He was the founder of Hyperloop One along with Brent Callinikos. He was the CFO of Hyperloop One. I learned from him that in his previous avatar he was the CFO of Uber. Brent took me to the Club Diner in Malibu. “I was eating at the Malibu Club in Los Angeles and I came out of dinner and saw a ChargePoint charging station charging my BMW car. And that really appealed to me, and I thought, “This is the future of electric mobility.”
This began Punit and Anmol’s journey to build a large-scale EV charging infrastructure and a large-scale ride-hailing service built on the back of technology.
From testing 10 cars in January 2019, to testing around 70 cars in June 2019, to 300 cars in December 2019, they partnered with Uber to create a bigger effort. I decided that it would be. They realized that if they wanted to scale their EV ride-hailing business, they would have to invest huge amounts of money in charging as well. Starbucks and McDonald’s don’t just sell coffee and hamburgers, they’re also real estate companies. In Punit’s words, “We want to create a charging pre or charging Starbucks in every prime location so that people can avail our services.”
Scale is the name of the game
They are building this business by further developing this nascent electrical technology stack. This business has a key theme on the supply side, resulting in an asset-focused model. They don’t rely on drivers bringing EVs; they rely on higher-ups bringing cars. “We have institutionalized the entire supply side. In the case of BluSmart, we source EV asset financing from development financial institutions (DFIs) such as Finance Corporation, PFC India, State Bank of India and Axis Bank. We’re getting funding from big companies.” DFI, big banks, are institutionally giving us millions of dollars to buy assets and lease them to BluSmart. ”
Similarly, charging is being institutionalized across the entire supply side. In fact, they discovered that the biggest bottleneck in this business was billing. And that is also the biggest opportunity. That’s because you can’t expand without building charging infrastructure. Addressing both will reduce the customer experience. Currently, BluSmart is India’s first and largest EV ride-hailing service and EV charging superhub infrastructure operator. BluSmart is building an integrated energy, infrastructure, mobility and technology business to build large-scale EV charging superhubs that will decarbonize mobility at scale and enable the expansion of electric ride-hailing services. Masu. BluSmart currently operates the largest EV full-stack ecosystem in India and Southeast Asia.
At some point in 2024, Blusmart will fully transition to using renewable energy, which should be a game-changing moment. We will be the only ride-hailing company in the world to operate at scale a fleet of 10,000 EVs powered by approximately 6,000 charging stations powered by renewable energy.
Speaking about customer insight and how it has become a key pillar for creating great service, Punit says: Please come on time. Plus, this car has a big ride refusal. ” These were issues common to other ride-hailing platforms that challenged Uber and Ola’s monopoly. With a full stack approach, they were able to earn him a 4.9 out of 5 star rating and hope to maintain this rating.
It creates inclusive and fair economic opportunities for drivers, allowing them to enjoy a better quality of life without the stress of owning assets. According to Punit, “We lease our cars to drivers, and we pass about 30% to them as fixed costs and 70% as variable costs to operate the car well. “You have to do it right. You have to manage your assets properly.” “You have to keep your car in top condition and you have to behave properly towards your customers. You must complete your assigned drive.” If the driver meets these three conditions, a balanced 70% will be paid. Recently, in the Fair Labor Report released in October, BluSmart was ranked second in India, while Ola and Uber received minus 0 scores.
Technology plays a very important role in uncovering all this. When the car runs out of charge and the state of charge (SOC) of the vehicle is exhausted, the technology tells the car where to pick up the customer and routes the car to the nearest charging area. So, when a BluSmart car runs low on charge, the technology routes the car to the nearest charging infrastructure and removes it from the ride platform.
All vehicles are equipped with tracking devices, making it easy to relay data at any point in time. The idea is that if we really want to decarbonize and scale up mobility, we need to look at this approach to energy infrastructure and mobility at scale. Regarding charging stations, Punit said, “The BluSmart ride-hailing business will be the anchor tenant of BluSmart Charging and will be the foundation for the expansion of the ride-hailing business. Without the foundation of charging, the ride-hailing business will not expand. Therefore, between ride dispatch and charging, This creates an intertwined approach of interconnectivity, which creates the BluSmart virtuous cycle, which spins the web and charges more cars. In this way, businesses support each other. And each of these businesses is independent. Charging infrastructure will soon be opened up to third parties.”
“People think of us as a mobility company, but we’re not. We’re building an energy infrastructure and mobility company.”
BluSmart operates India’s largest EV charging network spanning Delhi-NCR and Bangalore, currently powering 325 million kilometers and parking and charging 5,500 EVs. Recently, BluSmart launched a new platform called Assure by BluSmart, allowing large family offices to participate in his BluSmart growth story. For example, if you want to invest in 100 cars or 200 car models, Assure by BluSmart allows you to invest and lease cars for an individual or his HNI family office who wants to be part of his BluSmart growth story. I can. The business has already raised capital through equity financing from Deepika Padukone, Mukesh Ambani, Tata Motors and others.
When I asked why there were so few cars in the two cities, Punit said, “We don’t see many BluSmart cars in Bangalore.That’s why there is a complaint that there will be more in Bangalore. I said, ‘I’ll limit it to Bangalore only.”’ BluSmart aims to scale up to nearly 8,000 EV fleets across Delhi-NCR and Bangalore by next year. The company plans to start operations in three major cities soon. But whether he can deliver the same 4.9-star rating when scaled up remains a vehicle worth trying.
wise action
– Own and operate over 4000 BluSmart EV chargers
– Across 34 BluSmart EV Charging Superhubs
– Largest EV charging superhub infrastructure spanning 1.3 million square feet
– Annual revenue run rate exceeds $50 million Completed 10 million electric trips
– Driven over 330 million electric kilometers and saved approximately 24,000 tons of CO2
– Secured EV asset financing of approximately $200 million (Rs. 1.66 billion)
– 5,500 BluSmart EVs on Indian roads
[ad_2]
Source link
