Electric taxi platform Blu Smart raises $ 3 million from Deepika Padukone’s family office, others
Delhi-based startup Blu Smart has raised funding of $3 million from angel investor Deepika Padukone’s family office Ka Enterprises, JITO Angel Network, Kalpavriksh Trust, Survam Partners, co-founder of Micromax Rajesh Agarwal, and the MD of Bajaj Capital Sanjiv Bajaj among other investors.
The firm, co-founded by Puneet Singh Jaggi and Punit K Goyal, was launched in January 2019 as an electric cab-hailing platform. In June, the firm pivoted to offer subscription-based car rentals, ride-sharing on both electric cars and bikes and shared the EV charging infrastructure all across Delhi NCR region.
Blu Smart has also been in talks to raise $25 million in Series A round by early 2020 and has Centrum Capital appointed as an advisor. The firm plans on utilizing the funding to scale up operations across Delhi-NCR, Pune, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. Moreover, the electric cab startup will be expanding its electric fleet to 500 cars by November 2019 across Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, making it the most massive all-electric business-to-customer ride-sharing firm in India and among the top three in Asia.
The Blu Smart service will be competing not only with ride-hailing majors like Ola and Uber but also with car rental platforms like Zoomcar and Drivezy.
Homegrown Ola raises Rs 35.88 crore from Soth Korea-based’ pre-IPO’ fund
Bengaluru-based cab-hailing platform Ola has raised Rs 35.88 crore from a fund called ‘ARK Ola Pre-IPO Private Investment Trust,’ pointing out that the firm might have started planning for going public.
In July 2018, Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO & co-founder of Ola, stated that he and partner Ankit Bhati were intending for an IPO in the coming three years. The firm received Rs 79.93 crore this July in its series J round from investors like Swedish-based DIG Investment Ab, US-based Deshe Holdings, and, the two founders of Dubai-based technology investment firm Jabbar Internet Group, Samih Abdel Rahman and Hussam Khoury.
Ola plans to raise around $1 billion as a part of its open-ended fundraising exercise and has already received a commitment of approximately $ 490 million by far. Ola’s electric mobility unit- Ola Electric– raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Hyundai and Kia Motors.
