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Donning the investor’s hat yet again, Bollywood diva Deepika Padukone has invested in electric taxi start-up Blu Smart as part of an angel round of $3 million, through her family office Ka Enterprises.
An active investor in start-ups, the country’s highest-paid actress had earlier pumped in money in Drums Food (makers of Epigamia brand yogurt) and Bellatrix Aerospace (a space technology start-up), apart from co-owning private apparel label All About You with Myntra.
Blu Smart is also in discussions to raise $25 million in a Series A round by early 2020 and has appointed Centrum Capital as an adviser. The funding will be used to scale up operations across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad, even as it plans to launch its all-electric smart urban mobility services in Singapore and Hong Kong by the second half of 2020.
Other investors
The $3-million angel round also witnessed participation from JITO Angel Network, Kalpavriksh Trust (Centrum VC Fund), Survam Partners (Suman Kant Munjal Family Office), Rajesh Agarwal (Micromax co-founder), Sanjiv Bajaj (Bajaj Capital MD), Rajat Gupta (former Global MD McKinsey) and Rohit Chanana (Ex-President Strategy, Hero Corporate Services) among others.
“Blu Smart is helping reduce traffic volumes and pollution to make cities healthier and more liveable with its zero emission smart urban mobility service. We are transforming cities by providing convenient, sustainable and affordable mobility with great benefits for consumers, businesses and society,” said the company’s co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi.
The start-up was founded by Puneet Singh Jaggi, Anmol Singh Jaggi and Punit K Goyal in October 2018. It launched operations early this year and scaled its ride-sharing fleet to 200 electric cars across Delhi-NCR.
Blu Smart is further expanding its all electric ride-sharing fleet to 500 cars by November 2019 across Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, which will make it the largest all electric business-to-customer ride-sharing company in India and among the top three in Asia.
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