BluSmart: Delivering a better ride-hailing experience with Google Maps Platform

Taking on India’s established ride-hailing industry was an uphill battle, but BluSmart knew it was prime for disruption. The on-demand cab experience that once felt life-changing was broken: drivers would rarely arrive on time or at all and prices fluctuated abruptly due to surge. In 2019, BluSmart set out to address the industry’s most pressing concerns, while also prioritizing sustainability. Four years later, it has completed more than seven million trips with a green fleet of exclusively electric vehicles, which so far have saved the CO2 equivalent of taking 4000 gasoline cars off the roads.

Founded in Gurugram, BluSmart has built end-to-end operations for its cab-hailing app. It operates everything in-house, from leasing its own electric vehicles to recruiting drivers on predictable weekly earnings to developing a network of EV chargers. It doesn’t aggregate third parties on its platform, which means the company has full control over the quality of its service, aiming for a dependable and superior customer experience.

Though BluSmart has already taken over two of India’s busiest cities, it’s just getting started and is gearing up to add thousands of more EVs, and expand internationally. To deliver on its promises of being on time no matter the geography, it deployed the Google Maps Platform Mobility Services.

"We want to make zero compromises in providing a reliable and on time service to our customers and Google Maps Platform has helped us deliver that," says Rishabh Sood, BluSmart’s Chief Technology Officer. "To provide a great experience, your systems also need to be absolutely world-class and when it comes to looking at locations, distances, and more, there is nothing today that beats Google Maps Platform."

Planning cab slots days in advance with predictive traffic data

One of the ways BluSmart stands out is that it allows people to schedule rides days in advance. To ensure drivers are able to arrive at the booked time, the startup leverages Google Maps Platform’s historic and predictive routing data. It takes into account factors like traffic conditions, allowing BluSmart to improve its demand planning from each geography. BluSmart can then evaluate all its drivers’ ETAs to reach a place at a specific hour in the future. Knowing the best route also means that the assigned driver consumes as little energy as possible, and arrives on time.

"It's easy to know ETAs according to current traffic conditions, but we also need to predict what they will be tomorrow morning or in the evening," adds Sood. "For our business model, it's absolutely essential that we have a very accurate understanding of ETAs and distances."

Before BluSmart adopted Google Maps Platform, its systems had to perform a higher number of calculations to optimize ETAs.

"Realizing that Google Maps Platform Mobility Services are so easy to use, that you can get so much accurate information, was a big breakthrough for us. The implementation significantly improved our customer and driver partner experience," says Sood.

Hassle-free pickups and dropoffs even in bustling areas

Previously, BluSmart driver partners and customers had trouble pinpointing pickup spots, especially in complex, congested areas such as airports, where they navigate a maze of checkpoints and terminals. Since the Mobility Services integration, BluSmart’s app automatically identifies the most optimal pickup and dropoff points that are easiest for everyone to find. BluSmart has also integrated the Consumer SDK to provide riders with better visibility and predictability into driver partners’ estimated arrival times.

Eliminating these pain points has proved significant for BluSmart’s efficiency. Users no longer face delays due to inaccurate ETAs and driver partners spend less energy finding riders and more time driving them to their destinations. This plays an important role in helping BluSmart optimize asset utilization.

Enabling smooth, in-app navigation no matter the smartphone

Another challenge BluSmart overcame is turn-by-turn navigation on low-cost phones. Before integrating the Mobility Services solution, drivers would have to constantly juggle between the BluSmart and the Google Maps consumer app during a trip, which was unsafe and bogged down their phones. With Mobility Services, BluSmart driver partners can access the Navigation SDK component right inside the BluSmart app, saving their phones’ memory while facilitating a safer ride.

"Having navigation within one app has definitely helped in making the driving experience much more seamless for the driver partners and the feedback has been very positive," says Sood.

To fine-tune the integration further to BluSmart’s operations, it worked with Lepton Software,a Google Maps Platform partner. Together with Lepton, BluSmart effortlessly optimized Mobility Services to fit its infrastructure and customize locations in-app, such as its designated airport pickup points and dozens of charging stations.

Next, as BluSmart looks to expand overseas, it’s planning deeper integrations to gain more insights out of Google Maps Platform geospatial data to better understand new markets and improve its service.

Back home, BluSmart’s competitors look up to the electric model it pioneered. The startup is embracing the competition and believes it will help accelerate India’s electrification mission because at the end of the day, Sood adds, it will remain razor-focused on its differentiator which is to provide a superior customer experience to riders and driver partners alike. More importantly, for Sood as a CTO, it’s reassuring to have the support of a solid technology partner in the Google Maps Platform team for predicting ETAs, distances, in-app navigation etc.

"Google Maps Platform helped make our ETAs more accurate, reducing delays and boosting business efficiency by increasing our daily rides," Sood concludes. "This benefits all parties involved, and we look forward to continuing on the road this partnership is taking us."