BluSmart, the electric and sustainable urban mobility company that is taking on Ola and Uber in some of the poshest areas of Delhi, Bengaluru and Gurugram, is not the first success story of co-founder Punit Goyal. Goyal, a double-masters from the London School of Economics (in Finance) and Aston Business School in Birmingham, forayed into the green energy sector, fresh off from college.
Goyal said that before BluSmart took off, he sold two of his ventures to bigger players, and one went bust. He set up a 20 MW solar power plant in Gujarat that he sold to a Saudi player for $68 million, before selling off another 70 MW power plant in Maharashtra to Suzlon for $55 million.
Recalling his initial days as an entrepreneur before BluSmart, Goyal, in WTF is with Nikhil Kamath podcast, hosted by the billionaire co-founder of Zerodha, said that the idea of clean energy was life-changing for him. In the episode ‘WTF is Happening with EV?’ that also featured Tarun Mehta, CEO of Ather Energy, Chetan Maini, co-founder of SUN Mobility and Suruchi Rao, co-founder of Ossus Biorenewables, Goyal said he decided to set up a solar panel manufacturing plant after his dissertation.
“During my dissertation at Aston, I read about the role of clean energy and that was game-changing for me. I met some solar panel manufacturers in India and realised that there could be a massive opportunity to make solar panels in India and export to Europe, which at that point was the biggest market. So I decided to set up a solar panel manufacturing facility and called it PLG Power, after the initials of my grandfather, Purshottam Lal Goyal,” said Goyal.
Goyal started the company in 2008 to manufacture solar panels and did that for four years till 2012. “But the solar panel market just crashed in Europe…it was very bad timing. People were ramping up capacity to supply solar panels to Europe but the market crashed. I had not anticipated that and took a big beating…had to shut down the first startup. Big lesson learnt, I didn’t have a co-founder that time. We had Rs 150 crore of working capital at that time. The first venture shut down,” he said.
However, another opportunity presented itself when the Gujarat government came up with a solar policy. “They allowed people to set up solar power plants. We set up a 20 MW power plant, built that project and operated it for two years and sold it to a large Saudi company that was looking to buy an operating asset in India for a sum of $68 million. That was a good project and that’s when I met my co-founder Anmol Jaggi, founder of Gensol. They made that 20 MW power plant for us in a record time of 4 months. I had no idea that we would start BluSmart 8 years later,” said Goyal, adding that he had to give back some of the $68 million to their lenders.
“My third venture was another solar project, founded PLG Clean Energy Projects and did a small 70 MW solar power plant in Dhule, Maharashtra. Again Anmol’s company played a part there. Sold this to a large listed entity in India and they are also into the renewable space,” said Goyal. That company was Suzlon and he had sold the Maharashtra plant to them for $55 million.
The idea for BluSmart came to him after he met Shervin Pishewar, CEO of Hyperloop One, and Brent Callinicos, former CFO of Uber and Virgin Hyperloop one evening after he had gone to see Hyperloop One in Las Vegas. After meeting them that one evening, Goyal learnt what the world of mobility could be like, he said.
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