Can Green SM Succeed Where BluSmart Failed?

India’s ride-hailing market is worth $23.9 billion today, headed to $46.9 billion by 2034. That number explains why every few years, someone new walks in convinced they’ll crack it. Green SM, the all-electric taxi arm of Vietnam’s Vingroup – the same group behind VinFast – is the latest. It’s hiring drivers in Delhi NCR, promising ₹35,000 to ₹40,000 a month, and plans to charge ₹8 per kilometre with no surge. The timing isn’t accidental. BluSmart’s collapse left a clean gap in the EV segment, and Green SM just walked through it.

Why BluSmart’s Failure Still Matters BluSmart didn’t fail because the idea was bad. It failed because ₹900 crore in loans that Gensol Engineering had raised for EV procurement were allegedly siphoned by its promoters into personal assets. SEBI stepped in, Gensol’s stock collapsed over 80% and BluSmart shutdown overnight – 10,000 drivers, no warning. The demand for clean, no-surge rides was real. The people running the money were not. That distinction is worth holding onto, because the model itself never really got a fair shot.

The Existing Players Uber has roughly 45% of India’s four-wheeler ride-hailing market and recently put another ₹3,000 crore into its India operations. Ola, sitting at 25–30%, has moved to a zero-commission driver model – less out of generosity, more out of competitive pressure. Rapido is one worth watching more closely: 74 million monthly users as of March 2026, revenue up 46% to ₹648 crore in FY24, and quarterly losses that fell from ₹74 crore to ₹17 crore in a year. Rapido didn’t out-muscle anyone. It just came in cheaper, built habit, and let the numbers do the rest.

What Green SM Actually Brings The one thing Green SM has that BluSmart never did is a supply chain it actually owns. The Limo Green MPV – its primary fleet vehicle – rolls out of VinFast’s Tamil Nadu plant with a 517 km ARAI-certified range. No leasing middlemen, no Gensol like exposure. India’s recent petrol price hike quietly makes this better – every time fuel gets more expensive, the cost gap between running an EV fleet and a petrol one gets wider. And then there’s the valuation: Green SM is reportedly with $20 billion and eyeing a Hong Kong listing. A company at that stage doesn’t enter India to experiment. It needs a credible growth market on its books before it goes public. This isn’t just a cab service. It’s a pre-IPO narrative.

And unlike BluSmart or Rapido, this isn’t VC money with an exit clock ticking. Vingroup is Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate – it owns banks, hospitals, resorts, and a car company. That kind of institutional depth means Green SM can absorb early losses as a strategic cost rather than existential crisis. A VC-backed startup that misses its utilisation targets within months, is in trouble.

What Remains Unsolved BluSmart had the right idea and the wrong people. Green SM has eliminated the specific failure points that brought BluSmart down – no leasing exposure, no promoter-run financials, a parent that can absorb early losses without an exit clock forcing bad decicions. The governence gap is genuinely plugged.

What can’t be pre-verified is execution. At ₹8/km, the model lives or dies on utilisation and fleet discipline – neither of which a spreadsheet can stress-test at Delhi NCR scale. The real scorecard isn’t the Hong Kong listing. It’s whether driver payments land on time six months in, whether the. fleet stays on the road. The structure is the strongest any EV cab entrant has brought to India. The demand was always real – BluSmart proved that much. The question now is whether Green SM is the operator that finally delivers on it – at India scale.