Homegrown electric vehicle (EV) ride-hailing company BluSmart Mobility has raised $42 million (around Rs 342 crore) in a bridge funding round from its existing investors BP Ventures and Survam Partners, with participation from BluSmart’s leadership team.
The company raised $37 million in equity and $5 million in venture debt in this round. Additionally, nearly 50% of the fundraise was subscribed by BluSmart founders and its leadership team.
To date, BluSmart has secured $109 million across its seed to Series A2 rounds which includes an equity raise of $85 million raised across Series A rounds. It has also received EV asset leasing of $150 million (around Rs 1,200 crore) backed by Development Financial Institutions like the Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), among others.
The fresh proceeds will be deployed for expanding BluSmart’s ongoing operations. It currently has an all-electric ride-hailing fleet size of 3,500 operating in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru and targets to deploy 10,000 EVs in FY24.
BluSmart was founded in 2019 by Anmol Jaggi and Punit Goyal. The platform offers a fleet of electric vehicles that run on clean energy, promoting sustainability and reducing carbon emissions. It pits against ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies and domestic rival Ola.
The company claims that its monthly revenue has grown 3X over the last three quarters. It plans to increase its revenue by penetrating deeper into top-tier cities.
Jaggi said that the electrification of public transportation is imminent but the path to electrification has its own challenges. He further added that BluSmart addresses these challenges through a full-stack approach, which includes a born-electric tech stack, complete control over EV charging infrastructure (installation, execution, and utilisation), and selecting prime locations to build large-scale EV charging infrastructure while optimizing the use and maintenance of the EV ride-hailing fleet at scale.
BluSmart recently secured $77 million in asset financing from PFC to finance 5,000 electric vehicles for its platform. It plans to use the loans to finance 1,000 cargo three-wheelers and lease them out to last-mile delivery partners.
Prior to this, the company raised $25 million in May last year in its extended Series A round led by BP Ventures, the venture capital arm of oil & gas major bp, and Green Frontier Capital, with participation from Stride Ventures, Alteria Capital, BlackSoil and UCIC. It closed its Series A round at $50.7 million (around Rs 380 crore). In the past, it has also secured EV financing of $35.7 million backed by IREDA.
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