Shoffr Seeks to Fill Gap in Delhi NCR Ride-Hailing Market, Aims for 100 Daily Rides

Shoffr Seeks to Fill Premium Ride-Hailing Gap in Delhi NCR

Following the exit of BluSmart, a significant gap has opened up in Delhi NCR's premium ride-hailing market. Shoffr, a startup founded in 2022, is positioning itself to fill this gap by focusing on reliability and service quality rather than an electric vehicle (EV)-first pitch. With daily bookings for its pre-booked Point A-to-B rides steadily rising and expected to cross 100 soon, Shoffr is gaining traction in the market.

The space left vacant by BluSmart is seeing intense competition, with incumbents like Uber quickly moving to absorb demand. Uber has introduced premium offerings such as Uber Black, which is emerging as a key alternative to BluSmart's services. However, Shoffr's co-founder and CEO, Vikas Bardia, believes that commuters are prioritising consistent, high-quality service over the type of powertrain used.

BluSmart's exit from the market was a result of a series of regulatory and financial setbacks in 2025. The company suspended ride bookings after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) flagged alleged fund diversion by co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi through its affiliate Gensol Engineering, raising corporate governance concerns. This was followed by mounting liabilities and loan defaults, which further strained operations. By mid-2025, insolvency proceedings were initiated against the company at the National Company Law Tribunal, effectively pushing BluSmart into resolution and halting its services.

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Shoffr's growth and early traction are being driven by its focus on pre-booked rides, which allows the company to manage scale and customer expectations. "Traction is only increasing every day since the announcement, the numbers are only going up and we'll probably cross daily 100 rides in a few days," Bardia said. The company is currently operating around 100 cars in Delhi NCR and reports utilisation levels of 80-90 percent.

Bardia believes that users are increasingly accepting scheduled rides for better predictability. "I'm seeing more acceptance of pre-booking rides in hopes of getting reliable and higher quality service, not towards EVs per se," he said. Shoffr is not targeting the mass market and is aligning pricing with its service positioning. "Pricing decisions are based on our unit economics and we think is reasonable, given Shoffr's service quality," Bardia said.

The company plans to scale cautiously, prioritising service quality over rapid expansion. "We'll only scale at the pace our operations allow us. Focusing on speed often means trading off on quality, at least in operations-heavy businesses like ours," Bardia said. Solving for availability of quality drivers will be key to scaling while maintaining service quality, according to Bardia.

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