"BluSmart Collapse Leaves 10,000 Drivers, 800 Employees Jobless Overnight", 2 May 2025

As EV ride-hailing startup BluSmart’s rough patch continues, with allegations of fraud falling on the founders, more than 1,000 drivers, who were rendered jobless overnight, are set to stage a massive protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar..some drivers from Bengaluru, too, are likely to show up. BluSmart used to operate only in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai, with majority of the drivers coming from Delhi NCR. ..The fiasco in mid-April, when BluSmart shut its services, is said to have resulted in nearly 10,000 drivers being left jobless. ..the drivers are in many cases breadwinners for their families, with an average of five members in each family. ..One of the major demands of the protesting drivers is that the government should intervene in the BluSmart crisis so that there’s a way to help the drivers sustain their livelihood. ..the protesting drivers also claimed the lease on the existing 8,000 cabs on BluSmart should be handed over to them, so that they can eventually own these vehicles and continue to ply their trade.

.. It’s not just the drivers. The crisis has left BluSmart’s 800-odd employees too in the lurch. The company has neither asked them for their resignation, nor handed them the pink slip, but the suspension of operations has led to no work for the staff since end-March.

..Crisis broke out at BluSmart in the first week of April when credit rating agencies ICRA and CARE downgraded Gensol to D (default/junk) based on the feedback received from the company’s lenders about perpetual delay in debt servicing.

..market regulator SEBI in its interim order underlined that the Jaggi brothers used INR 262 Cr of company loans for their personal expenses such as buying an apartment in DLF’s The Camellias, funding foreign trips, and so on..