THE RIDE IS OVER

How the Jaggi brothers went from being the darlings of the start-up universe to becoming the exemplars of all that is wrong with it

- By SONAL KHETARPAL

WHEN ANMOL SINGH JAGGI SPOKE, YOU LISTENED. So it was this February, when the 39-year-old co-founder of ride-hailing app BluSmart declared at a conference in Gurugram: “Our aim for the next 10 years is that everyone in a metro city should get a BluSmart EV cab within five minutes.” For the investors and employees, it sounded not like a goal, but the very gospel. BluSmart had changed the ride-hailing game. It was built on a simple but powerful premise: reliable cabs with professional drivers, fixed fares, no ride cancellations and a wholly EV fleet. Primarily serving metropolitan cities—Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and, more recently, Mumbai—its focus on airport and office commutes won it user loyalty in no time. In 2024, it was clocking 25,000-30,000 daily rides, capturing over 10 per cent of the ride-hailing market in Delhi-NCR, and carving a niche for itself in the hypercompetitive mobility sector.

However, just as meteoric as their rise is the fall that Anmol, and his brother Puneet, now seem to have brought upon themselves. Allegations of funds diversion, delayed salaries, exit of their top leadership and, finally, the very worst—BluSmart ceasing operations. Where did it all go wrong?

Theirs was the stuff startup dreams are made of. Sons of an army officer, Anmol and Puneet, younger by two years, attributed their discipline and their daring to their defence upbringing. Bright to boot, both went on to study engineering—Anmol earned a BTech degree from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun; Puneet went to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. The entrepreneurial bug bit both brothers early—Anmol was only 21 when he set up Gensol Group in 2007, spotting an opportunity in the carbon credit market during his internship at Reliance Industries. When the sector took a hit after the 2008 global financial crisis, Gensol pivoted to solar consultancy, a space Puneet had discovered meanwhile.