BluSmart, and the story of "luck"

The BluSmart story is yet another reminder of how "luck" shapes our lives.

I'm not suggesting that it's "luck" that exposed the founders of BluSmart (and Gensol) for being outright frauds. They obviously brought it upon themselves. It's hard to fathom the BS they were pulling (and the fact that they thought they'd get away with all that? It's just amazing!). They bought a flat in Camelias from corporate funds, faked an entire manufacturing facility, laundered Crores for family "happiness".. this is all Cinema level stuff. And sooner or later, it would have come out in the news. And it did.

I'm talking about the "luck" of the employees of BluSmart. The operations team. The folks who actually ran the ship. The ones who struggled on the ground. The people who ensured that the Cars ran on time. That the drivers were well trained and polite. That the service ran like a properly oiled machine. Those guys. The folks who actually made it a much loved "brand". The employees.

Imagine their luck.

Think about someone joining BluSmart in the early stages. The person reads about the company's "mission and vision" of "painting Delhi's sky Blue" with a clean and green transportation service. It sounds so cool! He takes the plunge and starts to work. The business is hard, but this guy does his best to ensure that everything runs by the clock. Slowly and steadily, because of his operational excellence, the company becomes a household brand. People from all over express their sincere appreciation and become "fans". The company becomes a valid competitor to giants like Uber and Ola. It becomes the centre of a national revolution. And this guy? He's at the centre of the centre. Years pass by, and he's now one of the "senior employees". For all the great work he's put in for years together, he's earned his keep. But he doesn't know.

He doesn't know that the ground beneath his feet could shake anytime.

And then it happens. Someone lays a big fart and the sand castle gets demolished almost instantly. It crumbles like a house of cards. Centre of a revolution? This guy has to look for a new job now. Something which until a few months ago was a hallmark in his CV, will now attract unnecessary and annoying questions which frankly don't even have anything to do with him.

"What the fuck", is something he says when he reads the 30 page report that is released to national fanfare. His bosses were laundering money? When he was pulling off 80 hour work-weeks to make sure that the "brand" keeps glowing? And now he's lost his job and people are asking if he was in it, too?

"What the fuck, man", he says again. Imagine his luck.

"Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. The line's iconic. What would be a career/success analogue of it? I guess it would go something like:

All success stories are pretty much the same; each failure fails in its own way.

I wish all BluSmart employees a lot of luck. They did really well.

BluSmart's women drivers.

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