MUMBAI: App-based electric taxi service provider Evera Cabs is adding the first batch of 500 EVs that were repossessed and leased to it by lenders of troubled BluSmart. Evera is also absorbing several of BluSmart’s drivers who were left without work overnight following the suspension of BluSmart’s services last month.
“A big chunk of BluSmart drivers are queuing up to join Evera, with 10% of them being women…around 150 drivers already started doing trips,” the company said in a statement on Monday. The Delhi-based electric cab startup operated by Prakriti E-Mobility has onboarded 220 vehicles and will add the remaining 280 cabs in the coming days. The company plans to onboard another 500 BluSmart cabs.
Last month, BluSmart, an affiliate of disgraced Gensol Engineering suspended operations across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru after a regulatory probe revealed that the company’s promoters Anmol Singh Jaggi and Puneet Singh Jaggi diverted funds raised for buying electric vehicles for personal expenses. BluSmart has also roped in Grant Thornton for a forensic audit. An investigation by markets regulator Sebi which has barred the Jaggi brothers from the securities market until further notice showed that the two had systematically used loans from several creditors, taken in the name of Gensol, to buy a luxury flat in The Camellias in Gurugram, to jack up Gensol’s stock price, for personal use through their private ventures and for purposes other than for which the loans were taken.
The shutdown of BluSmart’s operations, once seen as a competitor to Ola and Uber, has created a gap in the market which players like Evera are tapping into to meet the growing demand for electric cab services. Evera will deploy most of the electric vehicles acquired in the first phase to expand operations in and around Delhi airport.
The development comes after Uber shelved its plans to absorb about 5,000 of BluSmart’s cabs to its platform. BluSmart has a fleet over 8,500 EVs.