Anmol Singh Jaggi, Co-founder of BluSmart, explains how the company, launched in 2019, is revolutionizing urban mobility with its electric vehicle ride-hailing service. It provides an exceptional customer experience and is steadfastly committed to sustainability and decarbonizing mega cities.
What inspired you to start BluSmart, and how did you identify the need for an electric vehicle ride-hailing service?
Launched in 2019, in India, BluSmart is a born electric service with superior customer experience in every ride and ensures zero cancellations. It has created a strong purpose through its people-planet-prosperity value system and continues to stay focused on decarbonising mobility at scale. BluSmart was started with an aim to create environmentally sustainable, safe and reliable ride hailing service. BluSmart’s singular mission is to decarbonize mega cities and revolutionize mobility in India and across the world.
Switching to EV is the need of the hour and the future of mobility is electric. As a start-up with the ambition to disrupt public transportation, BluSmart is actively working to improve the mobility ecosystem with seamless customer experience but also takes emissions into consideration.
Can you share some of the biggest challenges you faced during the early stages of BluSmart and how you overcame them?
In the early stages during the 2020 Covid period, BluSmart had to minimize its operations due to the lockdown. However, BluSmart used the time to revamp its technology and prioritize customer and driver partner safety. Innovative features like driver temperature tracking and real-time car sanitization information were introduced, ensuring rider confidence. Emerging from the pandemic challenges, BluSmart rapidly surpassed pre-COVID business levels within six months of restarting services. BluSmart’s commitment to reliability, safety, and emission-free mobility, coupled with consumer loyalty, continued to fuel this accelerated growth.
What sets BluSmart apart from other ride-hailing services, especially in terms of sustainability and customer experience?
BluSmart operates as a full stack, vertically integrated, born-electric model committed to environmental sustainability while delivering superior customer experience. This makes it the UAE’s first 100% electric full-stack premium limousine service and serves as a significant milestone in the UAE’s transition towards sustainable transportation solutions. BluSmart’s chauffeur driven luxury service in Dubai begins with a fleet of premium Audi e-tron cars. The diverse services cater to Dubai’s cosmopolitan population, offering city rides, airport rides, chauffeured rides by the hour within the city as well as drop-off to other Emirates.
The industry-first features include zero driver cancellations, flat and transparent upfront pricing, on-time arrivals and a carbon dioxide tracker that shows the amount of carbon dioxide emissions saved after every ride taken by the user.
Can you highlight some key milestones or metrics that demonstrate BluSmart’s growth since its inception?
BluSmart, with its fleet of over 7,500 electric vehicles (EVs) – the largest in South Asia – has completed more than 15.9 million emission-free trips, covering over 525 million electric km and saving 38 million kg of carbon dioxide emissions since its inception in 2019.
How has customer feedback influenced the development and improvement of BluSmart’s services?
Customer feedback has been crucial in shaping and refining BluSmart’s services. It has helped us identify and address pain points, enhance our app’s functionality, and improve the overall ride experience. By listening to our customers, we’ve been able to continuously introduce features they value most, ensuring a reliable, convenient, and eco-friendly ride every time.
What are the primary goals and focus areas for BluSmart over the next 1-2 years?
BluSmart has made its first international foray with Dubai operations. It was launched with a campaign titled #RideSmartDubai aims to promote reliable, safe, eco-friendly and luxurious travel experience. BluSmart operates as a full stack, vertically integrated, born-electric model committed to environmental sustainability while delivering superior customer experience.
Currently the focus is to make BluSmart UAE’s first 100% electric full-stack premium limousine service and contribute as a partner in the UAE’s transition towards sustainable transportation solutions. BluSmart’s chauffeur driven luxury service in Dubai begins with a fleet of premium Audi e-tron cars. The diverse services include offering city rides, airport rides, chauffeured rides by the hour within the city as well as drop-off to other Emirates.
What technological advancements or innovations is BluSmart working on to enhance its services and user experience?
BluSmart is continually working on enhancing the user experience by investing in technology, introducing new app features, and enhancing customer experience. BluSmart has built an indigenous born-electric technology stack which is its own proprietary technology, and solved the core issue of “fuel being a constraint” with EVs as against ICE powered vehicles where the ride-hails technology historically has not been required to worry about the fuel inside the car. Built a technology backend which is born electric and takes a full stack approach towards solving for ride matching at scale where no human is required to take decisions and the technology optimally guides the drivers right from picking up customers to reaching the nearest EV charging stations when running out of charge. It uses the ODRD integration i.e On Demand Rides and Deliveries, which is a deep integration with Google which gives BluSmart access to advanced data and functionalities compared to regular Google Maps APIs. BluSmart is one of the few companies to currently have the ODRD integration. This allows BluSmart to have more accurate and real time ETAs, distances, routes and also more precise locations which in turn help us to provide better experience to our customers.
How do you plan to maintain and improve service quality as BluSmart continues to scale?
BluSmart maintains service quality by ensuring seamless integration through strong partnerships, market research, regulatory compliance and maintaining consistency in customer experience. BluSmart’s chauffeur driven luxury service and industry first feature of zero driver cancellations, transparent upfront pricing and on-time arrivals are core to its brand and identity which is replicated in all markets it operates in. Significant effort goes in standardizing the experience for all customers. Continuous feedback and improvement helped BluSmart adapt quickly, ensuring operations resonated with the local community.
Why did you choose Dubai as the next market for BluSmart’s expansion, and what opportunities do you see there?
The UAE has truly been a game changer for mobility and sustainable solutions, setting a remarkable precedent for innovative urban development. We are thrilled to bring BluSmart’s sustainable business model and customer-centric offerings to the UAE’s mobility market.
The Dubai market presents a highly attractive opportunity for BluSmart due to its potential for significantly higher margins and profitability compared to India. We identified a market gap in the premium limousine segment and an opportunity to correct it through our core tenets of Quality, Reliability and Sustainability. Average order values in Dubai are four times higher than in India, translating to a projected revenue per car per day of AED 750-1000, as opposed to AED 150-300 in India. Leveraging insights from our successful premium offerings in India, particularly in rental and airport categories which account for over 50% of our revenue, we aim to replicate this success in Dubai, our first international foray.
What unique challenges do you anticipate in the Dubai market, and how do you plan to address them?
Every market has its own set of challenges. Dubai has stringent regulations and intense competition. To address these, we plan to ensure full regulatory compliance through a dedicated team and forge strategic local partnerships. We will tailor our services to meet local preferences, maintaining high service quality with rigorous driver training and vehicle maintenance, while still providing high quality, safe, reliable and superior service.
Can you outline your strategy for entering and establishing BluSmart in Dubai?
Our entry in this market makes us the UAE’s first 100 per cent electric full-stack premium limousine service and serves as a significant milestone in the UAE’s transition towards sustainable transportation solutions. We aim to offer a luxurious, reliable, and safe travel experience, resonating with users who value eco-friendly and high-quality services. By leveraging our commitment to sustainability and premium service standards, we aim to become the preferred limousine choice in Dubai.
What are your long-term goals for BluSmart, both in Dubai and globally, and how do you see the company evolving in the next five years?
Currently our focus is In Dubai, where we aim to build brand loyalty and trust by enhancing service availability. However, we’re conscious of the importance of strategic expansion and strengthening our positioning in the current markets. Building on India operations success factors, focus will be to target niche markets and go deeper in those geographies. Continuing to focus on AOV while also keeping volume of transactions high will be key in our strategy. Our expansion approach in key cities will include leveraging strategic partnerships.
