Gensol's Jaggi brothers: The rise and fall of serial entrepreneurs

The web of companies they created has now come to haunt them, especially when their latest creation BluSmart was just catching the public eye and the Jaggis were walking into stardom

This is not the first time that a company founded by brothers Anmol Jaggi and Puneet Jaggi has faced shutdown. The duo, who are now in the news for fund diversions at Gensol Engineering for personal use and halting the operations at BluSmart without notice, began their startup journey sometime around 2007. Like serial entrepreneurs, they have ventured into rising business segments. and shut or sold them when faced with headwinds before moving on to greener pastures.

 

The web of companies they created has now come to haunt them, especially when their latest creation BluSmart—electric cab service--was just catching the public eye and the Jaggis were walking into stardom.

 

The brothers, with two-year age gap, look strikingly similar. They love to cite their army upbringing. Their father Late Lt General P S Jaggi was a decorated officer of Army Air Defence. VVIPs including some of the top ministers attended his last rites in 2018.   

 

In recent years, Anmol and Puneet have almost always been seen sporting bright sky blue pagg (turban). White T-shirt with BluSmart logo was another trademark common to the brothers while making public appearances. They also made it a point to drive around in their electric cab. In other words, they wore the brand on their sleeves. Be it an interview or a panel discussion, Jaggis displayed a gift of gab, making tall promises and bold commitments.

 

Gensol was the first company founded by the brothers in 2007. A fresh graduate from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, it was Anmol who floated the idea of a carbon credits company in India – a non-existent sector in India. For three years, the business grew with marquee names in India Inc using their platform to earn or sell carbon credits. In 2010, the global carbon market crashed. So did Anmol’s dream. But only for a bit.

 

“The Kyoto Protocol (on carbon market) came into force in 2005, but some of the most industrialised economies including the US had not ratified it. We figured out that if the protocol is discontinued, then we would be out of business. So, we started six to seven businesses at that time - solar, waste management, energy efficiency certificates etc. Out of these, somehow only solar clicked,” Anmol told this writer in 2017 in an interview in New Delhi. 

 

The green journey

 

Jaggis have dabbled across the solar/renewable energy supply chain for nearly two decades. For that, they even made a shift to Ahmedabad in Gujarat—the first mover in renewable energy. The business started with Gensol Consultants which had an impressive list of clients – some of which went on to become the poster boys of India’s renewable energy sector.

 

Solar was a nascent sector and Gensol was liasoning for these companies to make in-roads in Gujarat. As the sector moved beyond Gujarat, and RE companies learnt the ropes, the consultancy business slowed down. Gensol widened its scope to trading of power and renewable energy certificates (RECs). Gensol, in its presentations around 2010-2011, even claimed to be a channel partner for the ministry of new and renewable energy for solar rooftop systems.

 

Then betting on its existing client base, it went big into building and managing RE projects. Around 2015, it already had 50 per cent market share, according to the company documents then. It is still one of the top five solar EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) firms, as per independent reports. According to the company documents, it counts leading firms as its clients: ReNew, Tata Power, Hero Future Energies, Shapoorji Pallonji, Engie, Adani, Greenko, Suzlon, among others. They even expanded to African nations, West Asia and South-East Asia.

 

Taking a thread from an existing business to build another has been Jaggis’ go-to model. Along with solar EPC, they also launched allied businesses such as a solar O&M (operations and maintenance) company Param Renewables, named after their father. Prescinto Technologies for providing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) services was another. The company invested in Ezysolare, an online marketplace for solar equipment installers, and Ezybox, a mobile, solar powered inverter.

 

Prescinto was sold to IBM in 2024. There is no recent update on Ezysolare and Ezybox. The same is true for their power trading business, carbon trading, RECs and solar rooftop ventures. Param has the same set of clients as Gensol Engineering. And, records show that between the two brothers, they were directors in more than 20 companies before the interim order by the Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) earlier this week debarring Jaggis from holding positions in Gensol and BluSmart over charges related to fraud and fund diversion. Most of the companies where they have been directors are limited liability partnership (LLP) firms. Some of them are trading firms with no clear line of business in the publicly available documents. Most of these LLPs have cross directorship, sharing the same address. The brothers also have personal investment in a clutch of firms in solar tech, battery manufacturing and the like. 

 

Driving into stardom     

 

Anmol was already making it to the ‘hottest young entrepreneurs’ and ‘40 under 40’ type of listicles during the last decade, but the true limelight came with the shiny white and blue all-electric ride hailing start up BluSmart, co-founded by Jaggis along with Punit K Goyal. Goyal had also founded PLG Power which was manufacturing solar panels. According to his LinkedIn profile, the company “was wound-up amidst a string of global bankruptcies in the solar manufacturing space due to crash in the prices of solar panels between 2011 and 2013.”

 

BluSmart was built to be different – clean electric vehicle (EV) cabs with payroll drivers. More than anything else, they impressed consumers with their before-time service. But Jaggis were in a hurry to make it big. The brothers expanded into EV leasing, charging infra, rental charging and even manufacturing of EVs. After much back and forth on manufacturing plans, there’s no update from the promoters on that front.

 

Jaggis may have built a web of companies aiming to ride the cleantech wave. But now under the regulatory scanner, it won’t be easy for the brothers to shut, sell and move on.