How the Jaggi brothers misled investors and lenders while being cleantech poster boys

When BluSmart first hit the roads in June 2019, it made quite a statement. Positioned as India’s first all-electric ride-hailing service, it arrived with the promise of transforming urban mobility. For consumers tired of the incumbent app-based duopoly’s practice of exorbitant surge pricing, messy cars, and those frustrating “driver cancelled” notifications, BluSmart brought a breath of fresh (and emission-free) air.

The clean fleet of company-operated electric cars with salaried drivers (as opposed to driver-partners with varying degrees of…