Rishabh Sood, co-founder and CTO of BluSmart discusses his founder journey, building a sustainable business and adoption of EVs with host Gautam Srinivasan.
Over the past decade, the Indian
Startup Ecosystem has undergone an exceptional evolution, surfacing as a
vibrant and dynamic landscape for entrepreneurs. India is hosting a plethora of
startups ranging from tech-driven to those focused on social impact and
sustainability.
The "Crafting
Bharat - A Startup Podcast Series" powered by AWS, and an initiative by NewsReach, in association with VCCircle, unlocks the secrets behind
these successful entrepreneurs’ journeys aiming to equip aspiring entrepreneurs
and business enthusiasts with invaluable insights. The podcast series is hosted
by Gautam Srinivasan, famed for hosting a diverse range of TV and digital
programs, currently consulting editor at CNBC (India), CNN-News18, Mint, HT
Media, Forbes India, and The Economic Times.
India's rapid urbanization is
contributing to rising pollution levels, but visionary founder Rishabh Sood,
co-founder and CTO of BluSmart, is revolutionizing the ride-hailing sector with
electric vehicles (EVs). In the Crafting Bharat Podcast Series, Sood talks
about his founder journey, building a sustainable business and adoption of EVs.
Explore the tales of Indian startup
founders' transformation from dreams to reality, navigating challenges to seize
opportunities through the Crafting Bharat Podcast Series.
Video Embedded https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXVM7-HTW_I
Segment 1: The Incubator
How
did you scale up but remain close to your customers in identifying their pain
points, and, once you solve those issues, how do you keep the product relevant?
The idea is that when you scale you
need to do things which do not scale. Many companies do this when they scale,
they start looking at customers as the data points. They will make pie charts
and try to figure out why their customers are unhappy, we also did that but
what we also did was to always try to maintain our ground connect, so, we would
become customer support agents for a day and receive customer complaints, feel
the pain & anger, and empathize with them. This is what helps us to stay
relevant, we physically go through individual complaints. The idea is to
capture the emotion. When you start looking at the suggestions or feedback as
data points and in pie charts, you lose the emotion out of it.
You
could iron out the issues with a unique full stack playbook that learnt from
degraded user experiences of your competitors due to their asset-light models
and resolve these issues to create a WOW experience while onboarding and
retaining customers?
If we built the same tech, built an
aggregator model or if we get driver partners with their own cars then we will
land up with the same problem, so, we fundamentally changed the business model
and built the technology for it. And that is what helped us to figure out that
we need to have the cars in our control, that way we can make sure that the
condition is extremely good and well maintained. The schedule model was also a
game changer for us and the reason for us to do a schedule model was because
you cannot do a real-time ride with 70 cars.
How
is AWS enabling BluSmart to power-up its backend to overcome issues around
quick ride-matching, zero down time etc. and save operational costs while
supporting your net-zero ambitions?
AWS has been a trusted and
supportive partner for us right from day one. We’ve built a lot of technology
and machine learning algorithms for our scheduled ride model wherein we were
able to make sure the car reaches on time. 97% of our rides are reaching in
time with zero cancellations. We had to predict time required for a ride during
different times of the day for which we built out machine learning models which
we are running on the AWS infrastructure, and it’s been running smoothly.
Segment 2: The Accelerator
What’s
the one lesson from BluSmart’s relatively slow expansion strategy that startup
founders can learn from?
We started with Delhi and today we
have 7000 cars spread across just two cities; Delhi and Bangalore but these are
big markets. I would say if you’re able to succeed in Delhi then there is no
reason why you will not be able to go to any other city and succeed. That’s
what you need to do, even when you are going slow you need to build things with
scale.
What’s
the best mantra to maintain long lasting co-founder relationships?
I think what it really boils down to
is trusting each other and having confidence in the ability of each other but
at the same time you need to question and push each other as well. You need to
maintain that balance of trusting but also really push and ask questions.
India’s startup ecosystem is
undergoing a significant transformation as the motivated founders lead with
exceptional innovation. The passion and vision of the entrepreneurs is keeping
the Indian startup ecosystem in motion.
Stay tuned to the Crafting Bharat Podcast
Series as we bring you these inspirational entrepreneurs for insightful and
candid discussions with Gautam Srinivasan.
Follow
Crafting Bharat
Instagram instagram.com/craftingbharat
Facebook facebook.com/craftingbharatofficial
X x.com/CraftingBharat
Linkedin linkedin.com/company/craftingbharat