Samarth Kholkar, the CEO and co-founder of BLive.
Credit: Special arrangement
Six-year-old Bengaluru-based e-mobility platform BLive is in talks with sector-focused venture capitalists and a few strategic investors with interest in automotive and clean-tech space, to raise $5 million.
In an exclusive interaction with DH, the company’s chief executive officer Samarth Kholkar said that after closing the last financial year (2023-24) with a Rs 24-crore turnover, he is looking at quadrupling this to Rs 100 crore in 2024-25. Presently operational in five cities, BLive harbours plans for greater presence in the northern parts of the country.
The company offers all kinds of back-end and front-end services to electric vehicle fleet owners. An extensive exposure in the gig economy with players such as Zomato, Swiggy and Rapido, enabled the comapany deploy (read deliver) around 10,000 electric two-wheelers (of multiple brands) to fleet owners last year and they plan on channelling another 15,000 this year.
Working essentially with fleet operators, BLive not only sources the vehicles for them but also accesses customers and identifies potential users from the gig worker community. According to a Niti Aayog report of 2022, the gig workforce is slated to touch 2.35 crore by 2030, accounting for 4.1 per cent of the country’s total labour force. This burgeoning workforce calls for digital intervention to streamline operations and address issues related to sustainable last-mile mobility - a space BLive has positioned itself in.
Its "Smart fleet application" helps fleet owners monitor the health of their vehicles and their batteries, offer predictive analytics to track the areas the vehicles are operating in and their access to repairs. It further helps them redeploy the vehicles when their primary users are on leave, and also remotely immobilise a vehicle in case of it not being returned by a user.
Operational in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, and Ahmedabad, BLive’s ambitious plans have to contend with insufficient charging infrastructure and unavailability of low-interest finance that become the stumbling blocks in EV adoption.